


wind beneath my wings

by mliz18



Series: Peaky Blinders Doing Their Best [2]
Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, Mutual Pining, Period Typical Bigotry, Period-Typical Racism, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pregnancy, Unplanned Pregnancy, Wedding, Wedding Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-10
Updated: 2019-11-16
Packaged: 2020-11-28 21:17:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 19
Words: 47,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20973206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mliz18/pseuds/mliz18
Summary: Sequel to “Better Things” PLEASE READ FIRST!!





	1. A Shelby Wedding

**Author's Note:**

> Hi all! You asked for more of Tommy and Evie so I'm starting a series of one-shots! Let me know what you guys think and feel free to leave requests for future fics in this series! 
> 
> *this one takes place somewhere between seasons 2 and 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Shelby family didn’t usually have proper weddings. There were shotgun weddings, courthouse weddings, secret weddings, and many many drunken weddings. This was something new.

Evie been waiting for something to go wrong, because something always went wrong. The wedding planning had gone smoothly, her dress fit perfectly, and everyone she loved would be there. Nothing had gone wrong yet, and it made her nervous. So, when she came down the stairs, arms full of flowers in need of vases, to see Tommy standing with Alfie Solomons in their entryway, she was not amused.

The two men abruptly went silent as they caught sight of her, determinedly avoiding her gaze and both looking like schoolboys caught whispering during their lessons.

“_ Shalom _, Evelyn.” Alfie said innocently, bending to kiss her cheek in greeting. Evie shoved the bunches of flowers into Tommy’s arms and he blinked down at them, baffled. She glared back up at Alfie.

“Alfie Solomons,” she started sternly, “we’re gettin’ married tomorrow.” He had the decency to look appropriately sheepish, and nodded vigorously.

“Yeah, yeah, I heard. Real nice for the both of ya, I was happy to hear.” She crossed her arms.

“And because we’re gettin’ married,” she continued, not letting him drop eye contact, “I don’t want you gettin’ Tommy - or _ anyone _ in this family - involved in _ anythin’ _ for the next week at least. D’you understand me?” Alfie opened his mouth, shut it, and looked to Tommy for help. Tommy’s eyes were glued firmly to the flowers, having the good sense not to get involved. 

Alfie heaved a great sigh. “Orright, _ ketzelah _, I’ll come back in a week.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Promise?”

“Promise.” She softened.

“You’re welcome to come to the ceremony, Alfie.” Tommy made a small, exasperated noise in the back of his throat, but knew better than to look up from the bouquets in his arms. Alfie chuckled. 

“Nah, best if I fuck off for a few days, innit?” He donned his hat, nodded at Tommy, and gave her another quick peck on the cheek before starting toward the front door.

“_ Mazel tov _, the both of ya.” He winked at them before slipping out into the night. “I’ll have a fuckin’ world class wedding present with me when I come back.” He called over his shoulder. Evie relaxed as the door shut.

“I am rather fond of him.” she said mildly.

“Fond of him.” Tommy repeated, his voice incredulous. “Fond of Alfie Solomons. Fuckin’ hell.”

“He’s lovely when we aren’t talkin’ about the business.” 

“He’s rather fond of you as well, it seems.” He said dryly. Evie turned and scooped up the flowers from his arms. 

“Don’t worry, I’m not Jewish enough for him.” She smiled at the frown he was leveling down at her. 

“Just take the fuckin’ flowers.” He muttered. Her grin widened.

Evie caught him glaring at the flowers on the table as they all ate together, only softening when she squeezed his hand under the tablecloth. Everyone was hovering in the sweet spot between tipsy and drunk, having had enough to be loose and laughing and warm, but not quite enough to be belligerent. It was a delicate balance that Shelby’s were notoriously bad at keeping.

Evie sat back and soaked it all in as the plates were cleared from the table, watching Esme soothe the squalling baby tucked into the crook of her elbow. There was something about the way that the baby seemed to have been made to perfectly fit her arms that stopped the breath in Evie’s chest. There was a longing she couldn’t name, something deep and quiet and hidden, creeping up her throat. Esme ducked down to press a kiss to the downy head and Evie stood up from the table abruptly, the rough scrape of the chair harsh in the soft thrum of the room.

She felt Tommy look at her questioningly, but she waved his concern away as she excused herself to slip out onto the balcony, feeling stiff and unlike herself. She took a few deep breaths of the cool night air, feeling the gentle swell of summer breeze ghost over her face and ruffle through her hair. As she calmed herself, she picked out the constellations that Polly had taught her. Orion the Hunter had always been her favorite, she liked imagining the arc of the sword swinging through the sky, cleaving through planets and suns and distant moons.

The door creaked open behind her and Evie glanced back to see Arthur ambling over with a glass of whiskey in his hand.

“What’re you doin’, hidin’ out here?”

“Needed some air, and yourself? Hidin’ from Linda?” He smiled sheepishly.

“She’s not happy that I’m drinkin’.” He admitted. Evie smiled but didn’t say anything.

“Havin’ second thoughts?” The corners of his eyes crinkled as he grinned at her. “S’not too late, I’ll run and get the car and you could shimmy down the drainpipe.” 

“My hero.” She snorted. He took a longer look at her, his smile dying.

“What’s eatin’ ya?” His voice was quiet and gentle, understanding enough to spark tears in her eyes. Arthur always knew. She shrugged, eyes fixed on the stars.

“Dunno. Gettin’ married just makes me miss my parents, I suppose.” Arthur didn’t miss the tremble in her voice.

“Oh no, don’t get all weepy on me now, it’s your fuckin’ _ wedding day _ tomorrow.”

“I know, I know.” She muttered, wiping impatiently at her eyes. He sighed. 

“Turn ‘round.” He nudged her gently until she turned to look back through the balcony doors to where everyone was talking.

“Look at ‘em all. I mean _ really _ look at ‘em.” And she did.

Ada had Karl dozing on her lap, his head heavy against her shoulder. John’s kids were running circles around a frustrated-looking Finn as he tried to make his way across the room. Polly was tipping a glass of champagne back gracefully, the glow of the fire nothing compared to the warmth in her eyes as she watched them all. . John was bending down to snatch Katie up and place her high on his shoulders to prance her around the room. Evie could hear her high giggle from where she stood outside. Michael and Tommy were smoking, near mirror images of each other, and the soft smile that stole over Tommy’s face as he caught her eye through the glass soothed the ragged bits of her.

“Look a’ all that family you have.” He said bracingly, gesturing with his drink. “There’s so much fuckin’ love in that room. Maybe it’d be nice to have your mum and dad here, but you’re orright without them, you know?” She reached out and squeezed his hand. 

“I know.” He nodded gruffly, and they stood in comfortable silence for a moment.

“Arthur, would you - I mean, if you like - I was wonderin’…”

“Spit it out, Evie, fuckin’ christ.”

“Would you walk me down the aisle?” She blurted out. Arthur’s glass stopped halfway to his mouth, whiskey forgotten as he stared at her. 

“Are you sure?” He croaked finally, eyes wide. She smiled.

“Who better, _ pral _?” He ducked his head to hide a sniffle before roughly throwing an arm around her. They stayed like that a while.

*****

Tommy lounged in their bed, smoking and watching Evie pull the pins from the complicated-looking twist at the back of her head. Her slim fingers slid them out, one by one, until her hair fell thick and glossy over her shoulders. 

Ada had begged Evie to let her cut her hair short and style it in the bob women were wearing these days, but Evie had staunchly refused. Tommy was secretly glad. He loved the thick tumble of curls down her back, wild and untamed just like her.

Her eyes met his in the mirror and she smiled. “Just think, we’ll be really, properly married after tomorrow.” He hummed in agreement.

“No more livin’ in unwedded sin.” She said, giggling. He snorted, reaching over to the ashtray resting on a stack of her books beside the bed to snuff out his cigarette.

“The maids will be relieved. Fuckin’ nosy gossips. Why they care about how we live is beyond me.” 

“Well,” she put on a stern face and a posh accent, “this is _ no _ way for a respectable man like yourself to live. It simply isn’t done.” He raised an eyebrow.

“Ah. Respectable, am I?”

“Positively honorable.” She held her serious face for a second more before breaking down into laughter. He sat up and tugged her off of her stool and onto the bed as she squealed. She wound her arms around his neck and settled over his lap, smiling as he splayed his hands over the small of her back.

“And just how does a _ respectable _ man act?” He murmured, pulling her flush against him. She had just brushed her lips against his when Ada and Polly burst through the doors of their bedroom. 

“Oy!” Evie shouted indignantly as Tommy hastily re-tied the ties of her dressing gown that had somehow mysteriously become undone.

“No,” Polly said sternly, pointing a threatening finger at both of them, “it’s bad luck to sleep together the night before the wedding.”

“Polly.” Tommy started, exasperated, but snapped his mouth shut at the glare she turned on him. She took Evie firmly by the arm and started to march her from the room, a grinning Ada trailing behind. 

“You’ll thank me later.” Polly called over her shoulder. Evie gave him an apologetic smile and mouthed _ I love you _ as she was yanked unceremoniously down the hall. Tommy’s head fell back against the pillows with a groan. 

He tried to get to sleep without her, but sleep wouldn’t come. He’d gotten used to laying with someone next to him. There was always a hand to reach for at the violent end of a nightmare when he was raw and gasping, someone to read to him when sleep danced just beyond his grasp. But now his bed was cold and empty. He tossed and turned and only the threat of Polly’s rage stopped him from stealing down the hallway to where she was sleeping with Ada. _ Bloody women _.

Instead of spending a very pleasant morning in bed with Evelyn, Tommy was sat in the kitchen, sleep-deprived and irritated. After snapping at one of the chefs for the third time, he’d forced himself to down a whiskey to dampen his nerves. He was surrounded by his groomsmen, smirking and sniggering at him over their food as he tried to manage a few bites of his breakfast before abandoning it in favor of a cigarette.

The rest of them laughed and joked and ate as Tommy smoked, rubbing his temple and willing the seconds to tick by faster.

“Is there really that much to be done?” He asked impatiently.

“They have to do all of their, you know -” Arthur waved his hand vaguely over his face and head “ - takes a bloody long time.” 

“Christ, could’ve been married three times by now.”

“You’re looking’ a bit twitchy, Tom.” Arthur grinned at him. 

“M’fine.” He muttered, rapping his knuckles against the table.

“She hasn’t left you yet,” John offered, “probably won’t leave you now.” Michael snorted into his tea as Tommy stared at him. 

They had seen Polly earlier as she popped into the kitchen to fetch a tray for tea, and he’d barely opened his mouth when she shut him down.

“Yes, she’s well. No, you can’t see her yet.” He’d glared at her as swept out of the room. 

“Women’s business.” John had said offhandedly.

“Bloody women.”

*****

Polly knew her well. There was no fuss, no stress, no dressing room overflowing with distant aunts and cousins and acquaintances all trying to help her get ready at once. It was only her, Ada, Polly, Esme, and Esme’s cousin Rosemary. 

Evie and Rosemary had met briefly at John and Esme’s wedding, but it wasn’t until the party celebrating the birth of their first child that the two of them spoke properly. A distant Lee cousin who didn’t know Evie had drunkenly propositioned her while the two women were politely chatting, and Rosemary had delivered a swift kick straight to his tender bits. It was a beautiful start to their friendship, and they got on like a house on fire.

Polly woke them early to draw her a bath. It was almost sinfully decadent, vanilla and rose bath oils and thick bubbles that tickled her skin. She soaked for ages, trying to quell the excited flutter of her stomach. When she finally emerged, rosy-cheeked and glowing from the steam, they sipped champagne as they chatted and picked at a tray of pastries that Frances had brought. 

Ada was tasked with applying her makeup as Polly started to sort her hair, and it took every ounce of Evie’s self-control not to sneeze at the powder flying out of the puff that was gently patting her face.

“Are you nervous, Evie?” Rosemary asked, a wicked grin curling her lips.

“What do I have to be nervous about?” she asked, surprised. “S’not like we haven’t known each other since we were kids.”

Rosie shrugged. “Most brides are nervous.” 

“I was near shittin’ myself.” Esme snorted. Ada and Evie giggled, and even Polly was smirking as she wound a strand of pearls through the bits of hair braided back from Evie’s face. 

“Although,” she continued, “I had no idea what I was walkin’ into. John could’ve been a sixty year old man with saggy balls for all I knew.” Ada had to put the lipstick down because Evie was nearly quivering trying to keep the laughter in.

“Well...he will be someday. You just got him a bit early.” Rosie said, struggling to keep a straight face.

"Might make it all the way to forty before they start to dangle." Ada quipped, and that was all it took. They collapsed into shrieking laughs and it was a full five minutes before they could look at each other without giggling. 

“God, my ribs.” Esme moaned through the howling, breath heavy from the exertion.

“I’m not nervous, just excited.” Evie said finally, hiccuping slightly. “We belong together, you know? Just feels right.” 

Ada smiled. “Who would’ve thought? Our Tommy and our Evie?” 

“I knew.” Polly said smugly. “Knew it from the moment he almost beat the life out of that Hughes boy you were caught with, the little shit.” Evie rolled her eyes.

“Liar.” Polly whacked the back of her head gently.

“I’ve a sense about these things.” She said primly, before gently turning her to the mirror. “Now look, you’re all done.” 

Evie had to blink at her reflection for a few moments. The creature in the mirror was lovely and delicate and didn't seem at all like herself. 

“Oh Pol’,” Evie breathed, “that looks beautiful.” 

“_ You _ look beautiful.” Polly corrected gently. Evie reached up to squeeze Polly’s hand as it was clasping her shoulder, their eyes misty as they met in the mirror.

“I’ll be a real Shelby now.” She joked, trying not to let the tears spill over and ruin her makeup. She saw Ada brush her own eyes discreetly.

“You’ve always been a Shelby, _ chikno _.” Polly’s smile was watery, but it disappeared in an instant. “Evelyn, if you cry and ruin that face I’ll smack you into next week.”

  
*****

The guests were seated, the organ was playing, and Arthur was nowhere to be found.

Tommy was silently cursing his brother from his place at the altar, dread starting to knot in his stomach. Anything could've happened, anyone could've gotten to them. Sabini, the Russians, there were enemies closing in on all sides. All he could picture was Arthur's bloody and crumpled form, body broken and lifeless. He was close to jumping out of his skin when the guests stood and turned in the pews. 

And there was Arthur, hearty and whole and walking Evelyn down the aisle, beaming so widely it threatened to crack his craggy old face in two. 

When they reached the altar and her veil was lifted, the force of her hit him like a fuckin’ brick wall. She was always beautiful, but he didn’t know a person could _ shine _ like that. He could see all the fuckin’ love and happiness beaming out of her and it all suddenly felt very fragile. The priest was saying something, probably something important, but Tommy couldn’t look away. Hope and happiness and terror were all warring in his chest as he smiled down at her, because maybe he didn’t deserve something like this. Men like him didn’t have nice weddings or beautiful wives or happy endings. Maybe this was too good to be true. But then she slipped her hand into his and it felt like she was smoothing out all the rough and jagged bits of him.

“Ready?” She whispered. He squeezed her hand.

“Ready.”

*********

Weddings involved a lot of standing. Standing waiting to walk down the aisle, standing at the altar, standing for pictures, standing and talking to every single business associate that had been invited to the ceremony. Evie was getting tired of standing. But she played the dutiful new wife and charmed the businessmen and complimented their wives, flushing graciously as they admired her dress and new husband. It seemed as if they would never leave, but finally the last guest was bundled into their car, and it was just the family. It was like the tension went out of all of them all at once; Arthur had shed his suit jacket, Michael’s tie was undone, and Tommy’s limbs seemed to loosen. They were among only their own. Johnny Dogs popped open a bottle of champagne and they drank eagerly as they waited for the cars.

"Can't believe that one man - his name is escapin' me - invited you to pay croquet. Fuckin' _croquet_." Evie said disbelievingly, taking a delicate sip of her champagne. 

"That was the chairman of one of companies that makes the motorcar parts we export."

"And who's he when he's a' home?" The corners of his mouth twitched upwards.

"William Bailey."

"Can't believe you're going to play croquet with William Bailey."

"I'll have you know I'm a crack shot when it comes to croquet." He frowned down at her, the very picture of indignation. 

"You've never picked up a croquet mallet in your life." She raised an eyebrow at him, daring him to challenge her.

"Well, I'll just have to learn. I'm a _respectable_ man now. Married and everythin'." Rolling her eyes, she drained her glass as the cars pulled to a stop in front of them, spitting gravel and rock in all directions. 

Polly and Ada had done a lovely job; the grove was strung up with lanterns and garlands, and there was a small band of Lee’s playing music by the caravans. Under the cheerful singing of the fiddles Evie could hear the gentle rush of the river below them. Summer’s wildflowers were plentiful, and the wind carried their sweet scent. The sun was starting to set, and everything was washed in a deep, warm gold. Evie turned to Tommy.

“Much better than a church.” She knew he agreed as he smiled down at her the way he did when she said something that secretly pleased him. They weren't God-fearing people, and Evie felt more at ease among the vardos and the trees than she did at the altar in front of the priest. She knew he felt it too, could tell from the smile that was quicker to come and the way his body was near humming with excited energy.

“Careful, Mrs. Shelby, that’s borderin' on sacreligious.” 

“Evelyn Shelby.” she mused, looking up at him thoughtfully. There was something soft flickering behind the blue of his eyes and she wanted to drown in it. “I think I like it. D’you?” He pretended to think about it, furrowing his brow and stuffing his hands in his pockets.

“It’ll do.”

Evie had no other family to invite; her mother’s clan had disowned her for marrying a _ gadje _ , and her father’s family in Ireland had disowned him for marrying a gypsy. Alone in the world, until she found the Shelby’s. But the grove was so full of the happy laughter of Lee cousins and Blinders she hardly noticed the absence. She was surrounded by love, bathed in love, _ spoiled _with love. Every single family argument was worth it for just this moment alone.

“Everyone shut their fuckin’ mouths!” Arthur bellowed. Evie saw John grimace at her out of the corner of her eye as an expectant hush spread through the crowd, but she gave Arthur an encouraging smile.

“M’not the best with words, so I’ll keep this short and sweet. Now I know that I’m Tom’s best man, and not Evie’s,” he started, “but I’d just like to start by sayin’ that Evie, you’ve always been a Shelby, and today doesn’t really change a thing.” Her throat constricted but she swallowed hard.

“I think most of us knew we’d always end up here,” he continued, “although the two of you arseholes made it fuckin’ difficult at times.” Tommy snorted. “Two most stubborn gits I know. But we’re here, and I’m thankful for that because Evie, if you’d tried to marry anyone else John and I would’ve gutted him like a fish.”

“For a fuckin' fact!” John yelled out through the swell of laughter, arms tight around his wife.

“Because in truth, there is no one more suited to you than Tom, and there is no one more suited to Tom than you. He may be a right miserable fuck at times, and I don’t really know how you put up with it, but you make my brother happy. You make him better.”

“I think know is the time you talk about how I make her better, brother.” Tommy called out.

“Nah, she’s good as is.” Arthur smiled as everyone laughed. “Evelyn Shelby. Good inside and out. You’re the best of us, _ pena _, congratulations.” He raised his glass and everyone else followed, heartfelt congratulations echoing through the trees.

Evie watched Tommy weave through the crowd to his brother, and for a moment they were both grinning at each other like they did before the war. They hugged for a bit, patting each other’s backs gruffly, and she had to look away as a lump rose in her throat.

She slipped up to him later, pressing a kiss to his cheek. He patted her hair clumsily.

“Did I do orright?” Arthur asked, grinning but Evie could see his uncertainty rising underneath.

“It was perfect.” She said softly. He ducked his head.

“Go on, mingle, it’s your weddin’ day. _ Nash. _” 

Evie was no more competent of a dancer at her own wedding than she had been at John’s, but Tommy swept her along and although she knew she missed a step here and there she’d never felt more graceful. They whirled ‘round and ‘round, the music unrestrained and joyful. Her lungs were burning by the time the music slowed but she could’ve stayed in that moment forever, watching the lanterns soften the planes of his face and feeling his hands warm against her skin.

Finn was as clueless as she was, his face flushing when he crashed into her or a dancer next to them. She couldn’t complain, she noticed him wince every time she stepped on his toes.

John had her laughing so hard that they didn’t follow the dance very well. Her ribs were aching by the time the song changed, and he looked at her uncertainly for a moment before sweeping her up into a long hug. They stayed like that for a bit before he straightened up and cleared his throat. 

“John Shelby, are you cryin’?” She teased. He glared at her.

“Absolutely fuckin' not.”

“It’s ok, I won’t tell.” She said solemnly. He rolled his eyes before leaning in to press a kiss against her forehead and weaving off into the crowd in search of his wife. 

Still winded, Evie begged off from another dance with Michael and wandered slightly away from the throng of people. She found a drink and leaned against the wide trunk of a tree, content to watch.

*****

The music changed to something slow and soft, and Tommy set his drink down to extend a hand to Polly. Lifting her from where she was seated with Charlie, he lead her into the crowd, and for a while they just swayed gently.

“I know you’ve a sense for things sometimes.” Tommy started. Polly was watching him, eyes sharp and wary.

“I do.” She said slowly.

“I’m happy, Pol’. Properly fuckin’ happy.” She smiled gently, and he felt her squeeze his hand.

“And you want to know…?”

“I’m happy, Pol’, and that makes me fuckin' scared. I want to know, will this last?” She let go of his hand so that she could reach up to cup his face.

“Yes.” She said emphatically. “You love her and she loves you. It will last.” Worry still gnawed at his belly.

“I'm worried about her safety, not her love. You know how hard this life is.” 

“I do, and so does Evelyn. I’m not sayin’ there won’t be difficulties, but I want you to believe me when I tell you that it _ will _last.” He exhaled slowly. 

“Orright.” The music ended, and Polly shook him off gently.

"Go. She's waitin' for you."

He found her after his dance with Polly ended, and for a while they just watched the people they loved laugh and dance, happy and carefree in a way they rarely got to be.

“Makes me almost want to leave it all behind.” He murmured, winding his arms around her shoulders and resting his chin on the top of her head.

“We could,” she said softly, “we could leave everythin’ behind and gallop off on a horse. We’d visit on holidays and ride every day. We could chase the sunset.” He closed his eyes.

"It sounds beautiful."

"Our children would be raised on the road, safe and hearty. No wars to fight in and no enemies to fear."

“One day, _ ves’tacha _, when there are no more rungs to climb and no more threats to fight. We’ll chase that sunset.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translation notes:  
(I may have accidentally mixed Romani dialects but I tried to keep it consistent. Feel free to correct me or offer suggestions for future words and phrases you would like to see!)  
Ketzelah - (Yiddish) kitten  
Pral - (Romani) brother  
Chikno - (Romani) daughter  
Pena - (Romani) sister  
Nash - (Romani) go  
Ves’tacha - (Romani) beloved


	2. Shell Shock

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The war ends and the Shelby men stumble home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set in the first few days/weeks after they get back from France, AKA right before the start of Better Things (check it out!) and before Tommy and Evie are together  
Note - obviously in Better Things Tommy’s still dealing with very recent trauma from the war, but this is right when it’s still extremely fresh and he’s trying to readjust to civilian life. This is going to be a little darker than that fic.

They’d prayed to, begged, pleaded with any and all higher powers listening that they might see this day. Polly had carried her rosary beads everywhere and never missed a service, trying to make up for the long stretch of years when God had no use to them. Evie had tried to call upon whatever spark of magic might lay hidden in her blood. The old crones said it was passed from mother to daughter, after all. She’d tried to read tea leaves and consult the cards, but she didn’t have the sense that Polly had, and Polly couldn’t see anything in leaves either. She wasn’t sure what Ada did, only heard her whispering softly to something in the middle of the night, when the things that lived in the shadows were more likely to listen.

Five years of holding their breath, but the day had come. They were standing on the train platform with their hearts in their throats, her and Ada and Pol’. They were peering through the steam that crept along the ground and curled through the air, taking in each face. How much older would they look? How broken would their bodies be? They’d let themselves picture the worst, limbs blown off or jaws wired shut or skin mottled red with burns, but then they appeared at the end of the platform. They were pale, and their cheeks were sunken, but they were whole. Evie and Polly and Ada broke into a run, weaving through wailing families and haunted men until they reached them.

At first they dared to hope that the damage wouldn’t cut too deeply. Arthur swept her and Ada up into his arms like little children when they ran to him, all choking back five years’ worth of tears. Evie clung to his coat like it was her lifeline before reaching out to John to brush away the wetness streaking his cheeks. She didn’t see Tommy’s face until Polly had released him, and even though it was cold and blank she threw herself into his arms. She felt him stiffen but she didn’t let go, needing to prove to herself that he was truly there, and after a moment his arms wound around her tightly enough to crush the breath from her chest. He was silent but the heartbeat beneath her cheek was as familiar to her as her own.

*****

They had been silent on the train, silent as they heaved their rucksacks over their shoulders, silent as they stepped onto the platform. The silence was a single, quivering note, tense and waiting to break. It went on and on while they searched the faces of the waiting families, pinched and pale and drawn as their own. Arthur broke the note first, ending their silence with a choked sob from the back of his throat that sounded like it might crack his chest in two. Tommy didn’t see them at first, only heard their footsteps hard and fast against the ground. Ada and Evie crashed into Arthur at full speed and he swung them up like they were small as dolls. Polly had gripped him as if she wanted to leave bruises, trembling against him as she searched his face for something familiar. He knew what she was searching for wasn’t there, saw it in her face in the moments before her eyes shuttered. He turned to Evie then, and that half-second before they crashed together seemed to last half a lifetime. 

They had carried pictures in the trenches, small scraps of paper that were stained and creased and blurred after five years. Tommy had carried one of her next to his lighter, taken on her birthday the year before they’d left. He’d taken it out every day and looked at it, tracing the curve of her cheek and trying to remember the exact sound of her laugh. Her face was narrower and her hair a bit longer, and she’d started to rim her eyes in kohl like Pol’. But it was still Evie. Beautiful and golden-eyed and looking like everything he had used to want when the world was simpler. It was hard to look at her. 

Tommy had braced himself for the inevitable, telling himself that they wouldn’t go together like they used to. It was a cowardly attempt to soften the blow he thought was coming, but then when she threw herself at him she fit perfectly into his arms, head tucked under his chin like it was made to rest there, and somehow that was even worse.

Tommy kept to himself for the first few days. He spent hours wandering around Birmingham, breathing in the smoke and smell of the mud. He skulked in the shop and holed up in his room. Evie had tried to come to him time and time again, but he still felt too jagged and raw around the edges to be around her. She’d come away bleeding if she reached for him. He could see her confusion and hurt every time he turned from her, and then her guilt when she knew he’d seen. 

The second week back he started to ride again. The third week back he started to invite her along. They talked about trivial things that didn’t matter, or they didn’t talk at all, but it was a start. The fourth week back was when he and his brothers went back to work. The business was ready and waiting for him and he found himself not having the time to ride, but little by little he let her creep closer and closer.

*****

It broke their hearts, her and Polly and Ada, to see how the men they loved came back. Arthur had always had a temper, but now he had flashes of scarlet rage, storms of red that clouded his vision and drove his fists flying into whatever had the misfortune of being nearest. Walls and jaws and sometimes window panes. Evie would bandage his knuckles and watch as the fight drained out of him, shoulders hunching in on themselves as he shrunk himself in shame.

John was better at hiding it; his hands didn’t shake and he didn’t fly into rages, but sometimes he would grab one of the children and hold them so tightly to his chest she thought he would never be able to unwind his arms. She would rub his back slowly until the panic in his eyes died.

Evie felt helpless. It wasn’t like the times she’d set their broken bones to knit back together or stitched their skin where it was torn and bleeding. She couldn’t hold this hurt in her hands, but she longed to soothe it, whisper to it. She ached to run her fingertips over its surface until it spilled its secrets. _ You are home, you are safe, come back to me _

She and Tommy started to relearn each other. He didn’t have time to ride as often but they were the two earliest risers in the family. They cooked breakfast and made tea and read together in comfortable silence. She accidentally burned the bread one morning and she saw the barest flicker of a smile light across his face.

It was Tommy she’d been closest to before the war, who had known her to her core. It was Tommy who’d changed the most in those tunnels and trenches.

He’d been open and laughing and warm, quick to smile and quick to show affection. His arm had always been slung around her shoulder and his hands seemed to love ruffling through her hair. She couldn’t call him a shell, not like some of the other men who’d come back as shadows of their former selves with glazed eyes and slackened jaws, minds broken like a child snapping a twig over their knee. No, he was not a shell, but he wore his cold face like armor, intellect and quick fists his weapons. But even so, even with his cold face and brutal hands, he wasn’t truly cold or cruel. Not to them, anyway. Receded, that’s how she thought of him. It was like he’d retreated so far into himself that only the cold bits remained.

Evie raised herself up on her elbows as her door creaked open. She thought at first it might be Finn but the shadow was too tall. It was Tommy’s voice, soft and deep, that broke the silence.

“Can’t sleep.” He murmured. He used to creep into her bed when they were small and they would read or whisper stories to each other or try to count the smokestacks, but since the war ended he’d stayed away from her room.

She shifted over and patted the mattress. She could see him hesitate for a moment but he padded across the room to stretch out next to her. It was a moonless night and his face was shadowed, but Evie could feel his weariness seeping out into the air around them.

“The pipe doesn’t work.” he whispered. Her blood ran cold.

*****

For a while there is silence, and Tommy thinks that maybe the dark has swallowed his words, kept his shame safe and hidden. 

“_ What pipe _?” Her voice came out a growl, low and rough and dangerous. She asked again and again and when met with only his silence, she jumped out of her bed to stalk to his room. He trailed behind her, watching her tear through his drawers with angry tears glistening in her eyes. She threw clothes and socks and books over her shoulder, not caring about the late hour or the sleeping bodies in the other rooms. She pulled it from the back of the bottom drawer and held it in her shaking hands. 

The crack of the pipe over her knee was louder than any German bomb or rifle. He tried not to wince.

“You will come to me instead.” Her voice was calm, and Tommy almost wished she were yelling instead. “You’ll come to me like you did tonight. I’ll read and we’ll talk and you will _ come to me _ instead. D’you understand?” 

“Yeah.” He couldn’t quite look her in the eyes, so Evie crossed the room to grasp his hands and force his head up.

“No matter the hour, Thomas. There are better ways to chase away the ghosts.”

*****

They were very careful with each other.

Every time she raised a tentative question, every time it looked like something was about to boil over, she was met with _ not now, Evie _ or _ who cares about the bloody war, Evie _ and that was that.

They surfaced when she didn’t expect. Stories about men who died right next to him, men he’d had to kill, men who had been crushed in the tunnels. Sometimes he stopped in the middle of a story, mouth opening and closing but the words stuck in the back of his throat. So he would stop and shake his head, frustrated as she prompted him. 

“There aren’t words for it yet.” Tommy would say. “It’s all rattlin’ around in my head but they don’t have the words.”

Evie had imagined each hurt as a rock - some smooth and polished as riverstone while others rough and gritty and catching against the skin - carried in trouser pockets and coats, sometimes held in hand or passed around for all to see, worried and rubbed by fingers but never softened. They came back with so many hurts, and she wanted to unburden them of each one. She thought that if she listened to the small scraps of memories that unearthed themselves during mundane conversations about the weather or the children, then perhaps she could slip them from their hands, let them fall to the earth, make the ache of their hurts fade bit by bit.

But the memories kept coming. One after the other, like climbing up a rope hand over hand with no end in sight. And that was when Evie learned that these were not the kind of hurts that could be set down. They would be carried and felt and mourned always.

Some nights he would talk after she finished reading and before he slipped back to his own room. Maybe it was easier in the dark, easier to peel back the raw layers of himself, to let the truth unfurl like ribbon up into the inky black around them. The stories of the men he knew and the men he watched die and the men he killed. The men whose blood ran through his fingers, the men he had tried to hold together. Their stories lived under his skin, layered between sinew and muscle and bone. He carried each face with him behind his own, carved their names into his ribs. The dull ache made them real. He would tell the dark how they died, sometimes in great detail, sometimes with a broken voice. He would give up his stories and then leave her in an empty bed, the sheets growing cold around her.

*****

He could hear the hope carried on her voice like a boat on the tide, ebbing and flowing every time she read to him. It coated every syllable, stole every breath. It lived in the pauses between the words, that hope she had for him. She was like a siren on a rocky shore, singing out to guide his weary bones home. She always woke for him, welcomed him to her bed for a story in place of his pipe. He let her voice wash over him, lapping at the ragged edges of his mind until the pick axes tired and his eyes could finally slide shut. On the worst nights he let her stroke his hair while he pretended to be asleep. How long had he gone without a kind touch? It was almost too much, every simple brush of skin against skin was too warm, too intimate. But it also wasn’t enough. He wanted to curl into her, to allow her softness to become his, but these small moments were all he allowed himself, for her sake as well as his own.

These nights were negotiations. Evie was bartering with him, trying to coax the man he used to be back to himself. Tommy knew that man wouldn’t come, _ couldn’t _come, and some nights anger pricked up his spine. He didn’t choose this, it was done to him. He secretly mourned that man, secretly wished he was still alive so that Tommy could be what she needed. Sometimes he wanted to yell and shake and tear at the hair on his head until she understood what he couldn’t give, but he knew the truth in her readings and the gentle extraction of his memories and every stroke of her fingers through his hair. He knew that she was in mourning too.

“You’re strong.” She whispered to him one night after she’d closed her book, “You were strong enough to survive and you’re strong enough to bear whatever this life can throw at you now.” Her shoulder brushed his as he lay in her bed, hands folded over his stomach. 

“Strength meant nothin’ over there. Strength wouldn’t stop a tunnel from collapsin’ down on top of you. Strength wouldn’t change the path of a bullet headin’ straight for your skull. No. It was _ baxt _.”

He felt her tentatively reach for him, and he opened his palm so that she could slip her hand into his. Guilt bloomed in his chest but he intertwined their fingers anyway, cursing himself. Selfish, he was a selfish man. 

“We’ve still to pay for everythin’ we did,” he murmured, “somethin’ will come to collect.” He felt her shiver. “Cold?”

“No.” She whispered. He squeezed her hand. _ Selfish _. 

He didn’t continue, but the familiar ache of dread remained. The earth was still scarred and healing, weeping for the wounds ripped across her crust, for the blood that still soaked the soil and roots of the world. Something was coming to collect, and they would all pay the blood price.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRANSLATION NOTES:  
Baxt - (Romani) fate, luck, fortune


	3. Beginnings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Polly brings home a stray.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **my fic Better Things gives some more context to her situation this is just to add to that and make it more detailed  
**wasn’t sure about the timeline so it’s after their mom died and their dad’s never there, Polly’s trying her best to keep them together while managing business (maybe a year or two before she marries and has kids)

Polly did something strange before supper, one evening. She piled a plate with bread, golden and warm from the oven, and scraps of meat from her chopping board. She brought it to the door, poked her head out, looked right and left and right again, and left it on the front steps. She eased the door closed carefully, making sure to leave it ajar. The children slid each other glances across the table as she sat back down but not one of them said a word, not even when she leapt up twice while they were eating to peer out of the crack. 

“Must be a ghost.” John said thoughtfully after many more days of this strange ritual, face skewed and wrinkled while he tried to puzzle through Pol’s odd behavior. “I keep seein’ shadows out the front windows and hearin’ footsteps back an’ forth.”

“Ghosts don’t have feet.” Ada pointed out.

“And they don’t eat food.” Tommy added. John was momentarily stumped by this logic, but then he glared back.

“How would _ you _ know?” 

“Are ya feedin’ the ghost, Pol’?” She stopped in her tracks to turn back and stare at John, utterly bewildered.

“Ghost?” She echoed. “No, never mind, I’d soon as not know.” 

Tommy let it slip from his mind until one morning when he heard a light flurry of footsteps outside their door. He waited but no knock came. The steps were so light and quick they could’ve been raindrops against the window panes, but the sky was clear and as close to sunny as Birmingham ever saw. He crept to the door and cracked it slightly, but whatever it was had scampered away. 

When he heard the noise again the next morning he flung the door open at once. It wasn’t a ghost, but she may as well have been. The girl was no bigger than Ada, and twice as thin. Her hair was a wild tangle of dark curls and her pale skin was streaked with dirt. Tommy’s violent swinging of the door startled her enough that she was knocked back on her arse, chest heaving in fear. 

He put his hands out slowly as if she were a frightened colt. He inched forward bit by bit, the way Curly had taught him. Limbs frozen, her eyes were darting back and forth wildly, desperate for an escape route. They were big and wide in a face narrowed by hunger, the only thing about her that truly looked alive. He opened his mouth to speak but before he could get a single word out she was scrambling backward in the dirt, rolling her small body over to duck behind a passing cart, and then she was gone. He stood there for a few moments, not completely sure if she had been real. Tommy had to look at her footprints in the dust to reassure himself that he hadn’t gone mad. He scanned the street for her face but she was in the wind.

He didn’t tell the others. If the girl was as hungry and scared as she looked, Polly had good reason for leaving precious food out on the street. He kept it to himself, but the shadowed look in her eyes stayed with him.

“Did you see all the fuss outside the Murphy house, Pol’?" Her hands stilled over the pot she was scrubbing.

“What d’you mean?” Her voice came out funny, like she hadn’t quite drawn in enough breath for her words.

“I was walkin’ home from school and Robbie yelled that there were coppers knockin’ down the Murphy’s door. He told me it was a hideout for communists, said they’d been holed up there for weeks an’ weeks, and -”

“_ John _.”

“Sorry. So I ran there on me own and I saw a copper carryin’ a _ body _ out. Was it a communist, Aunt Pol’? A real one?” But Polly had gone stark white, and Tommy could see the faint tremor of her hand as it pressed against her mouth.

“Knew somethin’ was wrong.” she whispered, so quietly Tommy could barely hear her through the fingers against her lips. “Knew that girl had no one feedin’ her.”

“Pol’?” Gone was John’s curiosity, because when Polly got a look on her face like that it meant something had gone very, _ very _ wrong. She looked back at them over her shoulder, but Tommy got the impression that she wasn’t really seeing them. She shook herself slightly, seeming to come back to herself as she fished her coat off of its hook.

“Stay here. I’ll be right back.” The words were barely out of her mouth before the door slammed shut behind her.

The curiosity was nearly humming through their bodies, the silence brimming with it. Tommy could feel it between them, trembling and electric. Something else was in the air, thick and stifling underneath the thrum of their anticipation. None of them wanted to admit the dread that was coiling deep in their bellies, but a body had been pulled from a building and Polly ran off with barely a word. Something was wrong.

It could’ve been hours or mere minutes when Polly walked back through their door. They all jumped up at once, but their words and questions and eagerness died on their lips when they saw the small shadow hiding behind her skirts. Looking down, Polly murmured something too soft for them to hear, and gently nudged the shadow forward. Tommy sucked in a surprised breath, because it was the ghost that poked her head ‘round to peer at them, eyes just as wide and scared as he remembered.

“This is Evelyn _ Murphy _.” Polly said meaningfully, glaring at each and every one of them in turn so that they wouldn’t speak of communists or coppers or bodies. “She’s to stay with us.” She marched the girl upstairs without giving them a chance to speak, ushering Evelyn her room and shutting the door firmly behind.

When she reemerged alone awhile later she was set upon by a crowd of clamoring children.

“She’s stayin’ with _ us _?”

“For how long?”

“Pol’ she’s so _ strange _.”

“Was she livin’ with the body?”

“Enough.” Polly snapped. They all fell silent, watching and waiting while she sank into one of the kitchen chairs and fumbled with her cigarette case. 

“She’s got no family then.” Tommy’s voice was soft but he still winced at how loud it sounded out in the room. She didn’t answer for a bit, and Tommy thought that maybe his question was carried away on the smoke of her cigarette. 

“It was her mother the coppers took from the house today, poor little love. Murdered.” Polly never lied or minced words or softened the truth. Tommy loved that about her.

“No dad?” Arthur was frowning up at the ceiling to where the ghost was tucked away.

“No, died in a factory accident a few years ago. I knew the mother well. She’s stayin’.” And that was that. 

*****

Her mother knew of Polly, everyone did. She was someone to be aware of, someone to keep safely in the periphery at all times. Hardened steel and sharp as a whip and wrangling a household of her brother’s children when she was only a few years older than them herself. She was a force of nature. Evie had seen her from a distance, the crowd parting in front of her like the Red Sea as she went. 

She had resisted the food left out at first. Could’ve been a trap from some uppity priss at the Parish, looking to box her up and ship her off to a home for girls where nuns wielded rulers like weapons. She saw that it was Polly setting it out one day, but still she stayed away.

She had tried to look the other way, but eventually her belly was too twisted up in hunger for her to ignore the smell of the bread still warm from the oven. Polly always tried to jump out to snatch her from behind the door, but Evie was too fast. She’d learned to be light and quick on her feet, knew how to run through the world without leaving a trace.

She could’ve run when Polly came looking for her once the coppers had gone. She’d managed just over two weeks without her mother, surely she could manage more. But when Polly had cornered her there was something in her face that stopped her running. Polly had eyes like hers, like her mother. Eyes that had seen the terror of men. Polly was safe.

When she’d marched Evie into the Shelby house, her tiny fist in hand, she’d drawn her a bath and combed the snarls out of her hair. 

Alone and finally warm, Evie couldn’t help but lean into every little touch. There were no kind words or soft touches for dirty children running through the street, only rough hands and angry voices. A copper who’d caught her nicking an apple dragged her into an alley to slam a boot into her ribs, the word _ pikey _spilling from his mouth like a damnation, dripping onto her body with the spittle flying from his lips as she curled in on herself. She peeked up Polly out from under the curtain of her hair, watching as she worked out a particularly nasty tangle at the base of her skull.

Polly asked why she finally let herself be caught, and Evie was startled into silence, quiet long enough that Polly probably didn’t expect an answer.

“Your eyes. They’re like mine.” The comb that was being pulled through her hair stopped. 

“Whatever do you mean, _ bitti chiriko _ ?” Her voice was light but Evie knew she was pretending the way adults did when something wasn’t nice to talk about. “Mine are a much duller shade of brown.”

Evie narrowed her eyes. “S’not what I meant.” She muttered. She wasn’t looking but she heard Polly heave a great sigh, a hand curling around the crown of Evie’s head.

“I know.”

She decided she liked Ada. Ada, with her delicate face and bright smile and love for sweets. Ada didn’t have eyes like her and Polly, but she was safe. They would play house or share Ada’s doll or draw with the bits of pencil and paper Polly gave them. Those moments were safe and warm and blissful and unlike anything she’d ever had before. 

Evie watched Ada’s brothers from a distance, couldn’t quite warm to them the way she did Ada and Polly. Arthur was loud and brash and quick to scuffle, teetering between boyhood and the awkward gangliness of adolescence at the ripe age of sixteen. He went around with a puffed up chest and his chin pushed out, listening for whispers to leap upon. John had an innocent smile and mischievous hands, always hiding people’s things or pickpocketing passersby in the street. Tommy’s head was always tilted back, throat bared to the sky, laughter spilling loud and generous from his lips. Evie liked his eyes, they were vivid and quick like him, sharp intelligence gleaming through the blue. It was Tommy she’d met first, suddenly and violently when he'd crashed through the door and set her back on her arse. Those seconds lasted a lifetime, and she’d seen the confusion and regret sweep over his face as he started forward, palms raised like she was a cornered dog. The other two had little time or concern for her, but Evie could feel Tommy watching.

*****

She was a strange little thing, never spoke a word around him or his brothers if she could help it. Those bloody eyes of hers followed them everywhere, big and solemn and golden in her face. They were like Polly’s, how they could see right through someone. When she watched him it felt like she was peeling him back layer by layer, unraveling him right down to his core. _ Bloody chov’hani _, Arthur always muttered. 

*****

The boys talked about her in Romani and assumed she didn’t understand, and for a while she let them. It was never particularly nasty, just mutterings about how it was strange the way she never talked, and off-putting the way she moved so silently. Arthur liked to call her a _ chov’hani _, a golden-eyed witch that would pluck out a man’s bones and use his teeth for her charms. She liked it at first, liked the idea of being dangerous enough to make a man quake with fear. 

They talked about her in the tongue they thought was theirs alone, until one day Evie got tired of being a _ chov’hani _ for the sake of their amusement. If she’d really been a witch she could’ve burned every man that had touched her mother where they’d stood, reduced them to a smoldering pile of ash and charred bone. How she longed to be bigger than her skin, to tower over men bigger than her and make the ground shake and crack under her feet. No man would’ve dared to look at her mother if they heard her whispering to the things that lived in the shadows and slipped between the worlds. Instead, she’d been frozen into place as she watched the bullets tear through her, her lifeblood spilling from her chest to stain the floor a dark and sticky red. If Evie had been a witch she could’ve willed the soil to open and swallow the man up, could’ve breathed life back into her mother’s glassy eyes. But she wasn’t a witch, and it was starting to sting.

She heard the mutterings again one morning after she’d startled Arthur by slipping silently into the kitchen. She wasn’t paying close attention, but her ears perked up at _ chov’hani _ and she whirled around with her fork brandished in her hand.

“_ I’m not a witch.” _She snarled from behind them. John nearly jumped out of his skin, and she couldn’t tell if it was the rare use of her voice that startled them or the realization that she’d understood everything they’d ever whispered about her under their breaths. Arthur’s jaw was slackened, looking utterly disconcerted as he stared back at her. 

A slow, lazy grin spread over Thomas’s face and Evie thought it was almost admiration shining in his eyes.

They were more careful around each other after that. They gave her gruff, jerky nods of acknowledgment instead of passing by each other silently. Evie still stuck close to Ada when they were all together, but they were learning to coexist. 

She and Ada were trailing behind them on their walk home from the schoolhouse one afternoon like they always did, when suddenly there was a rush of shouting and Ada was knees-down in the mud. The boys were just turning back, confusion spreading over their faces at the boy who was towering over Evie and Ada, cackling as he watched her struggle back to her feet. The laugh was sucked back into his chest as he caught sight of her brothers. He turned to run the other way, but Evie stepped in his path and socked him hard as she could. It wasn’t the dramatic cobbling she’d hoped for, he stayed standing and only swayed back a bit, but he held his eye and cried out in pain, so she felt vindicated. She shook her sore hand as John and Arthur chased the sorry boy down the street. 

“Take that you fuckin’ arsehole.” Ada shouted after him. Tommy helped Ada brush herself clean and reached for the hand Evie was massaging. She started a little but he didn’t give her a chance to snatch her hand back. He felt around her knuckles and fingers, prodding gently at the sore parts and noted when she winced. 

“We’ll have to teach you how to throw a proper punch,” he said absently, “you’ll break your bloody fingers if you keep tuckin’ your thumb like that. And you need to keep your wrist straight.” He curled her fingers the correct way and Evie bobbed her head along at his instructions.

Arthur and John came strolling back, smirking with their hands shoved in their pockets. Arthur waved Ada away when she asked what they did.

“He looked like he could do with a bath.” Johns said vaguely. Arthur threw an arm around Evie with enough force to knock her into him, tugging one of her braids teasingly.

“You’re orright.” He said, a delighted grin threatening to crack his freckled face in two. “We’ll have to teach ya how to hit someone the right way before you break that little hand o' yours.” 

“Just did,” Tommy called back, “she’ll be a right terror once she gets the hang of it.” Evie ducked her head but she felt a pleased smile twitch at the corners of her lips.

*****

He slipped into her room that night, a peace offering hidden behind his back. He didn’t bother knocking, none of them ever did. _ Bloody animals I’m raisin’ _ Pol’ always muttered. He inched open the door to see her curled up under her quilt. Polly called her _ bitti chiriko _, little bird, and as she started awake and rose up on her elbows to look at him he could see why. Polly had fed her up to the point where her cheeks had regained a healthy glow, but she was so small she looked like she would float away if not for the weight of the bedding. It was any wonder that she’d injured the boy at all. Her eyes were all that he could make out in the din, narrowed and wary as he padded across her floor.

“Brought you somethin’.” He whispered, breaking the silence. He sank down, creaking, onto the bed beside her and held out the book he’d hidden behind him. He’d been watching her as much as she’d been watching them. Everywhere she went, she read. Newspapers, advertisements, flyers handed out on street corners. She’d thoroughly pawed through the meager stack of books in the schoolhouse, and a few days prior he’d seen her look longingly at a copy of _ Aesop’s Fables _ in a shop window. It was beautifully embossed with shiny illustrations and gilded gold borders pressed into the dark green cover. It was a luxury they weren’t able to afford, but after she’d so nobly defended Ada’s honor Tommy and Arthur went back to that shop. Arthur caused a commotion by knocking over a display stand and Tommy stuffed the book under his coat while the owner’s back as turned. They’d scurried, smug as you like, back to Watery Lane with their prize.

Her small hand snaked out to pluck it from his grasp, and pride sparked in his chest at the shy smile that grew, trembling and hesitant, across her face.

*****

Evie learned quickly what Shelby loyalty meant. 

She’d barely even brushed the boy that was barreling past her, only vaguely noting the quick stutter of his hand knocking hers. _ Fuckin’ pikey _ had barely registered when Arthur turned on his heel, a storm of flying limbs and sharp elbows, to slam an angry fist into the boy’s jaw. The sickening crunch jolted through Evie’s body and she watched the boy crumple to the ground. Tommy and John held him down, listless and lolling on the street while Arthur kicked him once, twice, three times in the ribs. Ada sighed impatiently, arms crossed while she waited for them to burn through their anger.

“DON’T FUCK WITH OUR SISTER!” Arthur bellowed. John and Tommy released the boy and they continued down the street as if nothing had happened, except John slung an arm around her shoulders. He was pressing her into his side, the rough fabric of his coat rubbing her cheek, so that she couldn’t look back.

_ Sister _ \- she’d never been a sister before. Such a small word but it was glowing and warm, a small flutter in her belly, she wanted to carry it around in her pockets and wear it like a badge. _ Sister _ . 

It was a few months into living with the Shelby’s that Evie saw him, gruff unshaven face bent to the cobblestones and shoulders hunched as he wove through the busy street. She instinctively ducked back behind the barrels that Arthur and Tommy were helping Charlie load up into his cart, but there was no need. She’d always been safely tucked away every time he’d visited her mother. She peered at him through the spokes of the cart’s wheels, limbs locked in place and her knees trembling. She thought she might be sick watching him walk down Watery Lane, hearty and whole, while her mother slept deep in the earth. 

She only let out the breath she was holding once he rounded the corner and slid out of sight. She turned to see Tommy watching her, his face unreadable. She glared back at him, daring him to challenge or question her, but he just turned and grabbed another barrel. She felt like something inside of her had been shaken loose, like it was rattling around and couldn’t quite settle back down into its proper place. She drifted back into the house to where Polly was doing some paperwork at the kitchen table, frowning so hard at the floor as she shuffled forward she thought her face might crack.

“Are the barrels loaded?” Evie opened her mouth to answer but suddenly her breath was coming too fast. “Evelyn?” She looked up to see Polly looking down at her over the papers she was holding.

Evie hadn’t cried when her mother died. Tears were of no help to anyone, especially herself, so she’d taken the tears and locked them away. She could feel them sometimes, whispering and urging her to set them free. She could hear them now, only they weren’t whispering anymore but pounding on the door she’d shut on them. She thought maybe Polly could hear them too, because she pushed her chair back slightly and opened her arms. The door finally broke and Evie flung herself into Polly’s lap. 

Polly held her a while, stroking her hair and letting Evie’s tears dampen her collar. Evie heard the kitchen door open but Polly waved away whoever it was. She cried and cried and cried and Polly didn’t scold her once. 

“Was it one o' the men who used to see your mother?” Arthur had got it wrong, Polly was the witch, always knowing everything without having to be told. She sighed when Evie nodded against her shoulder.

“People like that aren’t long for this world, _ chavi _. He’ll get what’s comin’ to him.” Evie took a long, shaky breath and slowly straightened. Polly brushed a few damp strands of hair out of her eyes and wiped at her face with a handkerchief. 

“Better to let things out.” Polly said firmly. “Otherwise they’ll start ruling you.”

Tommy slipped into her room that night as he’d gotten into the habit of doing, but instead of reading a story or dragging her out onto the roof to shimmy down the drainpipe he just sprawled out at the foot of her bed, watching her. 

“You get scared ‘round men.” She didn’t respond but she eyed him warily. 

“Was it your father? Did he beat you?” It wasn’t the question so much as the nonchalant drawl of the words that sent her bristling.

“_ No _.” She snapped. “Never.” Tommy’s eyebrows raised.

“Really? Sounds nice.” Evie felt the fight drain out of her. Her fists unclenched and shoulders sagged in on themselves. She was just as soft and defenseless seeing that man in the street as she had been watching him strike her mother through the crack in the wardrobe doors.

“He was.” She whispered. 

“Ours does. Beat us, I mean.” His tone was as casual as if he’d told her it happened to be raining that evening. 

“Didn’t know you had one.”

“A father?”

“Yeah.

“Sort of. He’s off fuckin’ around somewhere in the world. He stumbles home when he needs cash.” He shrugged his shoulders but she could hear the tightness in his throat. Evie didn’t know what to say to that, so she kept her mouth shut.

“So it was other men who weren’t nice to you?” Tommy prompted gently. She hesitated.

“Wasn’t me they weren’t nice to.” Something like grim understanding sparked in his eyes.

“Was that why you avoided me n’ John n’ Arthur like we had the bloody plague?”

She didn’t answer, just drew her knees up to her chest under the blankets. He looked at her for a moment, seeming to evaluate her, but didn’t press.

“I’ve a present for you.” Evie peered out over the tops of her kneecaps, narrowing her eyes at him because the last “present” one of the boys gave her turned out to be a great fat toad left on her pillow. She’d felt slimy for _ days _.

“A real one?”

“A real one.” He promised. “But I have to show you how to use it properly.” Her interest piqued, Evie slowly shifted forward to look. 

“No man will ever make you feel like that again when you’re carryin’ this, because you know that if the bastard looks a’ you wrong you can gut him like a fuckin’ fish.” His voice had dropped to a heated whisper, and he slipped a hand into his pocket to pull out a small pearl-handled knife.

Evie felt her eyes go perfectly round.

“Just like Pol’s.” She whispered, breathless and delighted. “Can I hold it?” He nodded before showing her how to fold and unfold the blade, handing it to her to try for herself.

He wrapped his hands around hers and showed her how to flip it open and closed, sitting back once she’d gotten the hang of it. 

“Now you’re the dangerous one, _ chavi _.” 

Evie flung her spindly arms around him, feeling him pat her back awkwardly as she tried to put all of her thoughts and feelings into that hug.

"Orright, orright. Enough o' that." Tommy muttered.

"Can't wait to show the others."

"Arthur helped me nick it, says he won't come within three yards of you if you're wieldin' that thing."

"Prick."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *wrote the whole dang story and then realized I forgot about how Finn's age fits in. Super sorry*  
TRANSLATION NOTES:  
Bitti chiriko - little bird  
Chov’hani - witch  
Chavi - girl


	4. Years

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tommy toes a line.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some angst to break up the fluff :) Set a couple of months before they get married.  
Contains some dialogue from my fic Better Things - read for context!

It wasn’t like she hadn’t known - she’d grown up with him, she’d seen him stumble home ragged and weary and war-torn, she’d seen his hands beat and break and kill. She’d seen his hands and clothes so drenched in red it seemed as if he’d never be clean again.

He wasn’t even the one who’d done it, it was Arthur’s hands wielding the crowbar that caved in the man’s skull, who’d come away covered in blood and bits of brain and shards of white bone.

Tommy hadn’t killed him, but it was the way he watched. Blank-faced, impatient to get on with it. He only moved once while Arthur was beating the sorry man in front of him, stepping neatly to the left to avoid getting blood on his shoes. 

Evie knew the lengths they would go to defend the family honor, and when the copper had the unfortunate luck of not recognizing her when he pulled her from the market for suspicion of theft, she felt a pang of pity run through her core. His hands were rough on her arms and he pushed her against the brick wall of the alley hard enough to knock her head, but even when he called her a “thievin’ wog” she couldn’t find it in herself to be angry. He’d seemed so young, still emerging from the awkward gangliness of youth. 

Even as his hands gripped her tight enough to bruise, she’d resolved not to tell Tommy. The boy was new to the police force, he could learn to give the Shelby women a wide berth. She would give him this chance, this gift of safety, but then John came ‘round the corner and she’d known there was no saving the boy from the what was coming to him. The copper had made a grim error by putting his hands on her, but never did she think she’d see his skull dashed to pieces in the kitchens of her home, cracked open like an eggshell.

Evie had been witness to violence - to _ their _ violence - all her life, but as the last sparks of life twitched down the man’s limbs she’d been frozen in place with one hand pressed to her mouth and the other to her stomach. 

Tommy was watching Arthur dispassionately as he wiped down the crowbar and bent over one of the sinks to rinse his hands. His face hadn’t as much as twitched from the time John and Arthur dragged the copper, twisting and kicking, into their kitchen. The water ran red and Evie watched hollowly as Arthur scrubbed. She felt Tommy glance at the stricken expression on her face, the brush of his eyes heavy and measuring over her skin, weighing her reaction.

“You become accustomed to things after a while, I suppose, livin’ the life we do.” His voice was carefully composed, soothing but without any hint of apology. Righteous.

“I don’t know if it’s somethin’ I ever want to become accustomed to.” The words fell out of her mouth before she could stop them. The air in the room grew heavier, tension rippling through them like the wind. Evie could see it in the way Arthur’s shoulders stiffened as he stood at the sink, careful to keep his back turned to them. 

Tommy barely seemed to move but it was as if a different man had slipped into his skin. That man stole his kindness, cut the concern from the lines around his mouth. The man stuffed his fists into the pockets of his trousers. His face smoothed, the hard slash of his mouth the only hint of his anger.

“There has to be a line, Thomas.” She said stiffly, hands fisted in her own skirts because she didn’t know what to do with herself, even though she longed to grasp his shoulders and shake him until sense had settled in his head. It was the wrong thing to say, judging by the sharp flare of nostril. She could feel the grit of his teeth vibrating through her own body.

“The _ line _, Evelyn, is simple: no one hurts my family. I told you, didn’t I? No one will ever treat my family the way they treated our mothers. Not as long as I draw breath.”

“You can’t hurt everyone who hurts us.” Evie pleaded. She needed to see him come back into himself, because the statue standing in front of her was a stranger wearing Tommy’s clothes. He was unmoved. He watched her for a while, slowly lighting a cigarette and taking several indulgent drags. The glow of the match hollowed his cheekbones, and Evie could see the pinprick of light reflected in the blood soaking the floors. The silence went on for what felt like days as Arthur dragged the body away. 

“Can’t I?” He asked finally. He tossed the cigarette aside and it hissed as the lit end landed in a stray pool of darkened blood.

He walked straight past her, not sparing her another glance. Evie stood there, ears ringing, blood roaring in anger. Arthur said something to her but she didn’t hear.

She thought he might come to bed after business was done for the night. No matter how earth-shattering the argument Tommy always came to bed and they whispered their apologies across the pillows, but he stayed away. Evie was left to sleep alone, dwarfed in their bed that seemed far too cold, because that was the rule; if someone hurt Tommy Shelby he hurt them right back.

It took over the house, the iciness that settled thick and solid between them. She crept from room to room, wading through the cold that felt high enough to lap at her neck. Three days passed without a word. She wanted to break the silence that swathed them like a thick quilt but every time she closed her eyes the man’s skull cracked to pieces again and again. The crunch of bone would not leave her ears. 

On the fourth morning, Frances informed her that Tommy had gone to the London flat for the week.

“He has a busy week of meetings lined up.” Frances said smoothly, but Evie could see the sympathy in her eyes. 

Maybe he wanted space, or maybe he wanted her to hurt. All it did was drive home how lonely she would be rattling around in their big old house without him. She was surrounded by maids and butlers and groundsmen but in that big empty house she belonged solely to herself. Was that to be her future, prowling around a house like a war widow, with only photographs and crumbling memories to comfort her? 

She’d grown comfortable after things had settled in London, but it was a false comfort. Any one day could be the day that Tommy crossed the wrong person, that his guard wasn’t raised high enough. Thomas Shelby was larger than life but he bled like the rest of them. It would only take one bullet, one stray cut of a knife, and Evie really would be alone in this big house without him.

She gave him the week, but when he still hadn't come home after eight days she drove into London. She used her own key and barged in without knocking. Tommy was sitting on the sofa, calm as you please, reading the paper. It was like he’d been expecting her. _ Bastard _. She opened her mouth but he cut her off. 

“I’ll never make any apologies for protectin’ you and the rest of the family.” He didn’t bother looking up, just kept his eyes on his paper. Everything about him seemed thrown into relief when he was angry, from the crisp lines of his suit to the knife-sharp tilt of his cheekbones. 

“I’m not askin’ for an apology.” She said shortly, but he continued as if she hadn’t spoken.

“The disappointment you feel in me is your own fault, Evie. You’ve convinced yourself that I am a good man, and now you’re realizin’ that you were wrong. I’ve never claimed to be a good man.”

“You _ are _ a good man, Thomas.”

He didn’t respond, but all Evie wanted was for him to look up at her. 

“You’re not one to run from a fight.” She challenged.

“Run?”

“You’ve been hidin’ in this flat all bloody week.” He spared her a glance over the top of his newspaper before looking back down again.

“I’ve not been hidin’. I’ve been lettin’ you decide.”

“Decide?”

“This is the life, Evelyn, and I thought that you knew that. But you seem to be waverin’ on whether or not this life is for you.” Evie felt herself gaping at him, caught off balance and teetering. “‘I may not be a good man, but I won’t drag you into a life and marriage full o’ things you can’t be _ accustomed to _.” He wasn’t looking at her but she saw his mask slip, just a bit, the smallest downward twitch of his lip. The smallest crack, but she could see the hurt. She sucked in a sharp breath.

She took the newspaper from him and set it down on the sofa, kneeling in front of his legs and folding his hands in hers.

“You _ are _ a good man, Thomas, and that’s why I agreed to marry you. You are a good man, and that’s why I’m still goin’ to marry you.” She felt the slightest movement under her palms, an infinitesimal brush of his fingers against her skin. She’d hoped for more, but she tried to swallow the disappointment gathering at the top of her throat. She looked up at him pleadingly.

“It wasn’t a judgment, Tommy.” She said softly. Something in his eyes softened just the tiniest bit, but his mouth was still pressed flat.

“I told you once I try to keep you away from the most dangerous parts of our business. I still do. You shouldn’t have to live a life of blood drenching your floors.” The hurt was closer to the surface now, simmering in his voice. Evie wanted to smooth it away with her fingertips.

“S’not the blood that scares me.” His eyebrows twitched up, silently encouraging her to continue. She took a shaky breath.

“I know that everythin’ you do, you do for us. I haven’t been at the forefront of it, I haven’t seen all the things you’ve had to do to make us safe and strong. I’m no stranger to violence, but it threw me to see it in my home. Because one day you’ll finally cross the wrong person. One day you’ll go too far. I know this is the life, I just can’t help but think about the life I would have if everythin’ finally caught up to you.”

She stood. His eyes followed her but he made no move to stand himself, and Evie knew she’d get nothing more from him. She nodded slowly, looking down at her hands.

“Come home when you’re ready. I’ll be waitin’.”

Two more long and lonely days passed. On the second night, Evie was sat at her dressing table, cursing to herself as she searched for all of the tiny pins tucked away in her hair, when she heard soft footsteps approaching behind her.

“_ Ita, bitti chiriko _.” She glanced at his face in the mirror. The cold stranger was gone, and it was just Tommy in his own skin once again. He came up behind where she sat and gently pulled her hands from her head, replacing them with his own. She fought the shudder that threatened to rise up her spine at the blissful brush of his fingers through her hair. As he pulled the pins from the coil of curls at the base of her skull she started to speak.

“My mother knew a whole pantheon of gods - Greek gods, Roman gods, Norse gods. It seemed like every rock and river and tree had their own patron. I knew all the names and all the stories.” She stared down at the array of pots and bottles covering her dressing table. “And I bargained with every single one for the five years you were off fightin’ in the mud and shit. I begged and I pleaded. I told myself then that if you just came home I would be able to forgive you for anythin’.” She looked up. “I meant it when I said it wasn’t a judgment.”

“I know.” It was quiet but it was warm. She shut her eyes as she felt the knot in her chest unspool at his forgiveness.

“You don’t have to worry about what would happen to you if I died. I’ve made sure that you’ll be safe and comfortable the rest o’ your life.” Suddenly the knot tightened together again. It seemed to have a pulse of its own, beating alongside her heart. She scoffed.

“D’you really think I care about what _ money _ I’ll get if you’re gone?” Evie could hear the hard edge of her voice but she couldn’t seem to will it away. Her mouth was full of something bitter.

“No, but you haven’t explained yourself all that well.” His voice sounded like he was trying to hold back a smile, but she felt too off-kilter to let him sway her to smile back. 

She stood so abruptly that he was forced back. “I care about the children we’ll have and Sundays we spend in bed. I care about growin’ old with the man I love and not standin’ over your coffin before I’m wrinkled and grey.” He watched her from where he stood by the bed, his smile dying and leaving him blinking and uneasy. 

“What I can’t _ become accustomed to _ is you holdin’ your life so lightly. It terrifies me. You offer up all o’ your years as collateral damage but I don’t accept that. Those years o’ yours are mine.” She stepped closer to him. 

“I claim them, Thomas, d’you hear me? I claim all the years you don’t expect to live.” He hesitated. 

“I won’t make you any false promises, Evie.”

“Then make sure they’re true. Be more careful, stop thinkin’ you’re untouchable. You owe me those years, and I intend to collect.” He sat slowly on the edge of the bed, opening his palms upward. She stepped forward to slip her hands into his, and they just stayed there a moment as he watched her thoughtfully.

“Are you always this scared for me, Evie?” She felt herself start at the low and husky brush of his voice. It was layered with regret and awe and something else, something hazy and soft.

“Not always,” she said reluctantly, “things have been calmer for a while. I know you can handle what needs handlin’, but you’ve said yourself: it’s not strength that ensures survival, it’s _ baxt _.” He exhaled slowly. Her hands felt heavy as lead in his, fingers tense as she waited.

“Orright.” Evie felt tears of relief pool in her eyes and she threw herself into his arms, desperate to feel him close to her. The thick wool of his coat scratched her cheek but she nuzzled further into the crook of his neck.

She breathed easily for the first time in days as his arms wound around her waist, one hand cupping the back of her neck like a small kitten and the other tracing soothing circles along the length of her spine. 

“My years have always been yours, _ ves’tacha _, the ones I’ve lived and all those still to come.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRANSLATION NOTES  
Ita, bitti chiriko - hello, little bird  
Baxt - luck, fate  
Ves’tacha - beloved


	5. A Brother's Job

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Evie gets caught with a boy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Evie/Robbie is mentioned in my other fic a few times so I thought I would expand a little and give it its own story.

As far as first kisses went, Evie thought it was nice. Robbie’s mouth seemed a little too wet, but his lips were soft and she liked the way he held her face in his hands. She liked it so much that she forgot that they were open and vulnerable in Charlie’s yard, and that Robbie was very likely in danger if they were caught. It was nearing sunset, and the boys would be searching for her.

Evie started to find her rhythm as he pressed her gently against the side of the stables, and Robbie had just brought a hand up to twist through her hair when Arthur’s deep bellow snapped her back into herself. Her stomach dropped to the muck-covered ground as the two of them wrenched apart as if they'd been burned. 

“GET YOUR FILTHY FUCKIN’ PAWS OFF OUR SISTER!” Robbie’s face went a funny ashen color and before Evie could open her mouth he scrambled back from her, turning tail and sprinting out of the yard. John and Arthur and Tommy darted after him, faces set and angry. Evie made to follow but Charlie caught her by the elbow as he emerged from the stables, her breath rushing from her lungs in one quick _ whoosh _ as he stopped her in her tracks.

“Oi, not so fast young lady.” His hand was rough on her arm but his voice was soothing.

“I have to stop them, they’ll beat him bloody.” She struggled against his grip.

“Best let them go, Evie-girl.” Charlie said bracingly. “Bein’ there won’t stop ‘em and seein’ it’ll just make you feel worse.” She glared up at him as he let go but there was no real heat behind it. He gave her a small smile and chucked her lightly under the chin, turning to amble toward the stack of crates he was meant to be unloading. She stood there clenching and unclenching her fists, her heart in her throat, as worry bubbled in her chest. Curly peeked out at her from the stables.

“D’you want to groom the horses with me?” Curly asked kindly. “Always makes you feel better.” Evie felt her shoulders slump.

“Orright.”

*********

Nothing in his life up to that point felt quite as satisfying as the crunch of the Hughes boy’s jaw under his knuckles. John and Arthur were holding the sorry lad down while Tommy drew his fist back again and again and again. He could feel the blood spraying from the boy’s broken nose and split lips, but only when he fell unconscious did Tommy finally draw back, his own knuckles cracked and bleeding from the boy’s teeth.

Tommy could feel his brothers watching him warily, fighting the surprise creeping over their faces. He looked away. He didn’t want to explain the rage simmering in his chest, simmering and rolling and vibrating like a song waiting to be sung. It was an ugly rage, a black and bitter jealousy that whispered in Tommy’s ear. It urged his fingers to wrap ‘round the boy’s throat, to break each one of his knuckles so that he would never be able to touch Evie again. It had roared to life when they rounded the corner into Charlie’s yard to see Robbie pressing Evie against the stables, hands in her hair and lips on hers. It demanded blood, and Tommy was happy to oblige.

They dragged Robbie home and left him slack-jawed and half-conscious on his front stoop, bruised and bloodied head lolling against the brick, before turning to make their way slowly back to Charlie’s yard.

“Didn’t know we were goin’ that far, Tom.” Arthur said hesitantly, trying to keep his voice neutral.

Tommy bought himself a few moments by taking out a cigarette and lighting it as it wobbled loosely between his lips, his injured hand shaking,

“And just how far did we go, Arthur?”

“Thought we would just scare him a little, not beat him half-dead.”

“He put his fuckin’ hands on her.” He could feel John and Arthur sliding each other glances but they said no more.

*********

Evie had just finished helping Curly groom her favorite Andalusian when she heard their rough footsteps over the straw-covered ground. 

“Oi, Evie, time to go home.” Evie bristled at being summoned.

“Best go, Evie-girl.” Curly whispered, “But I’ll have this one ready to ride for you tomorrow, eh?” She let a small smile twitch over her lips.

“Thank you, Curly.” She whispered back, squeezing his hand, before steeling herself and marching out into the yard. 

They were leaning against Charlie’s motorcar, smug as you please, with barely a hair out of place. Arthur and John had twin smirks painted across their faces with their hands stuffed in their pockets. Their grins only widened as she glared daggers at them. 

“Had to be done, _ chavi _, can’t have all the boys of Small Heath goin’ ‘round thinkin’ they can put their grubby mitts on you.” John said cheerfully. Whatever response Evie had been about to spit at him died in her throat as she noticed the blood dappling Tommy’s shirt.

“What did you do?” She asked sharply, but Tommy wouldn’t look at her. She kept glaring but his eyes were glued to the ground, the muscles in his jaw twitching wildly like he could barely keep himself in check. Evie felt a sudden prickle of shame, hot and sharp, run shuddering up her spine. She told herself that she shouldn’t feel ashamed of a kiss, but Tommy’s face was dark as thunder and the stiff set of his shoulders made her feel suddenly very small.

Arthur pushed off the car hood and came to sling an arm around her neck. She tried to twist away from him but his grip was solid as iron. 

“I think it’s time to be gettin’ you home.” He said firmly. 

The walk back to Watery Lane was silent. Evie wanted to shrink down and let the soil swallow her up every time Tommy pointedly avoided her gaze. She prayed the entire way that Polly or Ada would be there to save her, but the house was empty when they walked in and Evie was sat down in a kitchen chair by Arthur. 

“You better not have hurt him too badly.” She snapped. She waited for them to reassure her that they only meant to scare him, roughed him up a little and sent him on home, but a funny, uneasy look passed over Arthur and John’s faces for a moment before they pushed it away. She felt her stomach drop all the way down to the floor.

“Then you’ll have to punish me too.” She glared. “I _ wanted _ him to kiss me.” John made a face.

“Can’t be goin’ ‘round kissin’ boys and actin’ loose.” Arthur said sternly.

“_ Loose _!” Evie nearly shrieked. “It was one fuckin’ kiss.”

“_ Today _it was just a kiss.” John piped up. “Don’t want you in the family way any time soo-” He ducked as Evie grabbed an apple from the table and chucked it at his head it with near-deadly accuracy. Arthur didn’t bother to hide his grin as his brother cursed under his breath. Evie turned to Tommy for help. His bleeding hand was held tight to his stomach and he was pointedly looking everywhere but at her.

“And just what do _ you _ think about all o' this bullshit?” He finally dragged his eyes to hers, and Evie searched his face desperately for any hint of warmth but it was unreadable. Tommy shrugged stiffly, smothering a wince as he jostled his injured hand.

“It’s a brother’s job to protect his sister.” But the words sounded funny coming out of his mouth, like they’d gotten stuck and tangled together in the back of his throat. Evie threw up her hands.

“Fine. I guess I’m doomed to live as a bloody nun the rest o’ my life.” 

“I think nuns frown on cursin’.” John said mildly as she stood. She narrowed her eyes at him.

“Don’t fuckin’ push it.” He held his hands up in surrender as she turned to stomp up the stairs.

*********

Tommy spent the better part of the evening stubbornly trying to bandage his split knuckles on his own, but his left hand couldn’t manage the knots and every time he got close the gauze slipped down his fingers. John and Arthur had, in some sort of silent agreement, disappeared to give him space to let his anger dissipate. Ada sided staunchly with Evie, and Polly was as likely to break his left hand as she was to bandage his right. So he sat there, bleeding and sore, glaring at Evie’s box of salves and bandages fighting off the urge to ask her for help. But then he started to drip blood onto his sheets so he gathered the fractured bits of his pride and scooped them up along with the box. 

He slipped down the hall, avoiding the creaky floorboard by Pol’s room, and hesitated outside Evie’s door. He raised his hand to knock, but he never knocked, so he swallowed the guilty lump in his throat and eased the door open. 

She was curled up under her quilt staring out her window, a book left open and forgotten in her lap and her hair fanned out over the pillow like molten silver in the moonlight. Her brow was furrowed and her arms were tucked around herself like she was trying to ward off the cold. All of the fight she'd had, the fight that had left her snarling and bristling like a ragged alley cat, had drained out of her. 

She glanced up at him as he gingerly crossed the room to sit at the foot of her bed, looking so sorry and sad that Tommy almost felt bad for Robbie Hughes’s fractured jaw. Almost. 

“Can’t sleep?” She asked, and Tommy fought a wince when her voice came out rough and scratchy from spent tears. He held up her box and his sore hand.

“Can’t tie a fuckin' knot with my left hand.” He muttered, even more bloody guilt rising in his chest as her eyes widen in dismay.

“I’m sorry,” she said regretfully as she scooted closer to take the box of bandages from him, “I should’ve patched you up earlier.” Tommy snorted.

“You were angry, it’s orright.”

“I still am angry, but you’re bleedin’ you fuckin’ idiot.” She took his right hand gently in hers, prodding at the broken skin over his knuckles. She unwrapped his ragged gauze and started to smooth salve over the angry cuts. She giggled as he told her how he tried using his teeth to wrap the bandages but just ended up with gauze stuck to the roof of his mouth, and he tried to ignore the spark of warmth that crackled like embers in his belly as she smiled.

When she finished with his hand she leaned back against the bed frame, not quite able to look at him. He could see her sinking back into her sadness.

“Are you ashamed o' me, Tommy?” He felt his eyes widen in surprise.

“No, never.” He said immediately. She sighed.

“Arthur thinks I’m a whore.” And there was that sadness again. Tommy wanted pluck it from where it glistened in her eyes. 

“Arthur thinks you’re a fuckin’ princess, Evie.” He saw some of the tension in her shoulders ease a little. “Nothin’ you could ever do would make us ashamed o' you, _ chavi _.” That coaxed a small smile out of her. Small, but bright as the sun.

“It was just nice,” she whispered, “to feel wanted.” Tommy felt his stomach clench. He knew all about wanting. 

Polly bid him good morning the following day with a whack over the head.

“Tell me, Thomas, did it help?” She asked crisply as she settled back down to her coffee.

“Did what help?” He asked warily, eyeing the newspaper still brandished threateningly in her grasp.

“John told me you nearly beat the life out of that poor boy.” Tommy winced. Her eyes were just slightly too _ knowing _ for his liking.

“He put his hands on her.” He muttered. Polly watched him for a moment, breathing a heavy sigh like he’d said exactly what she’d expected.

“And did it quell that storm you’ve had brewin’ in your belly?”

“A little.” He said shortly. Polly raised a sharp eyebrow and flexed the wrist holding the paper. “No.” He admitted.

“Men.” She muttered. “You’ll figure it out one day. Now, Charlie needs you and your brothers at the yard. _ Nash _.”

And away he went, the wanting still twisting and simmering in his belly. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRANSLATION NOTES:  
chavi - girl  
nash - go


	6. Climbing Vines

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The men go off to war.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ** This chapter contains Alfred Tennyson’s poem ‘Break, Break, Break’, which I do not own  
**Not sure if they ever addressed when exactly Martha died, but I’m pretending it was before the war started.

They broke the news over supper, their words falling like stones in calm water. A silence that seemed to last several lifetimes stretched like oceans between them, immense and insurmountable, until Polly’s fork clattered from her hand to her plate with a tinny clang. Evie winced. Polly’s voice was low and dangerous as she glared at each of the three men in turn, all of them avoiding her gaze.

“You’ve _ what _?” Arthur cleared his throat, shifting uneasily in his chair.

“We’ve enlisted. We ship off in a week.” And that’s all any of them would say. They sat there, shoulders hunched and eyes cast firmly downward as she erupted. Polly yelled and shook her fists and spewed threats, but when she sat back down, shaking and tight-lipped, nothing had changed. They’d enlisted. They were going. There was nothing to be done about it. Evie felt Tommy’s eyes on her but she kept hers on her lap, hands fisted in her skirts tightly enough to whiten her knuckles.

It hung in the air like woodsmoke for their final week at home, living in the house like another person - It hovered behind their words and in their silences no matter how much they tried to ignore it. 

On the morning of their last full day at home, Tommy woke Evie before the sun had even crested over the horizon of smokestacks and chimneys. They stole away to Charlie’s stables and saddled Orion, a graceful black Friesian that Evie knew Tommy loved. He settled behind her after helping her to mount, spurring him to an easy trot. And off they went, winding through the smokey streets that were just beginning to lighten. They went on and on until they reached the city’s edge. The air was fresher and the light brighter, but they kept going as crowded buildings coated in ash turned to a countryside of gentle hills and greenery.

Tommy was warm and solid behind her, and she could feel the contentment rolling off of him in waves at the feeling of the reins wrung through his hands. Evie closed her eyes and leaned back against him, head bumping against his collar bone.

His voice was light and smooth as his breath rushed over her hair.“You’ll be sendin’ me off with bruises if you keep thumpin’ me with that rock solid head o’ yours.” She didn’t need to look up at him to see his smile.

“Shut up.” She said easily, a smile of her own stretching over her face.

They stopped on the bank of a river when the sun had reached the middle of the sky, tethering the horse and stretching out in the meadow grass. It was a rare fair day, not too cold or damp, and the sun washed warm and gentle over them. They lay in easy silence for a while before the question that had been hovering on Evie’s lips all morning slipped free.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were enlistin’?” She heard a soft sigh escape him but it wasn’t angry or impatient. Just sad.

“You would’ve asked us to stay.” Her stomach twisted. Was that all it would’ve taken?

She raised an eyebrow. “Would it have worked?” There was a beat of silence as he seemed to weigh his answer, jaw working furiously.

“You know Arthur’s never been able to refuse you a thing.” He said finally. There was something odd in his voice, a softness about the way his mouth closed around the words. She glanced over and he was smiling to himself like he’d made a joke, but Evie wasn’t a part of it.

She let herself drink that smile in, greedily hoarding the crinkled corners of his eyes and the way the curve of his mouth lifted his cheeks. It was her favorite smile, the one that softened the planes of his face. She knew it by heart but traced it with her eyes anyway, committing it to memory so that it might carry her through the moments she would feel his absence the most.

“I can hear you thinkin’, Evie.” She felt heat rise in her cheeks..

“Sorry.” She muttered. He looked over at her like he knew exactly what she was doing, and before she could even blink he was on his feet, bending down and offering his hand. 

As he pulled her to her feet, Evie expected him to let go. Instead, he tugged her closer and bent to swing her up over her shoulder. She yelped and swore and kicked at him but he just laughed and ducked to avoid a stray fist, walking cheerfully to the river’s edge.

“Thomas Michael Shelby, you put me down or I swear -”

“Down? Very well.” _ Down _ was the wrong choice of word, and he tossed her unceremoniously over the edge of the bank. She twisted and flailed inelegantly in the air before plunging into the cool water. It was shallow enough that when she struggled to her feet, sputtering and coughing hair out of her mouth, the swell only rose to her ribs. She’d just managed to find a sturdy foothold when suddenly something blurred and dark hurtled through the air toward her. Tommy crashed into the water so close to her that she was knocked down again, feet scrambling for purchase against the smooth bedrock. _ Fucking Shelby _.

They lay back down on the bank to let the sun dry their clothes, soaking in the thin warmth of its mid-afternoon rays. After a few minutes of silence Evie looked over to see that he’d dozed off in the long blades of grass, hands pillowed behind his head. She watched him for a while, examining every little detail - the thin blue veins criss-crossing eyelids fluttering in sleep, the steady stutter of his pulse against the curve of his neck. He seemed devastatingly fragile in that moment, like she could cup the spark of his life between her palms. It would be easy for a bullet to fly screaming through his skin, easy for a grenade to rend him limb from limb. It would be nothing for the war to swallow him up and spit out all of the leftover bits that would no longer amount to a man. What would be left? His crinkled eyes? The scar on his right forearm? 

Evie felt panic start to rise like the current of the river, higher and higher until she felt like she was neck-deep and straining for air. She screwed her eyes shut and forced herself to breathe and breathe and breathe, but it wasn’t quite enough.

They all crammed into the snug at the Garrison that night, even John’s kids and Finn. Evie held him, warm and impatiently squirming, on her lap as she nursed a glass of wine. John tried to sneak his younger brother a few sips of his whiskey but Evie batted his hand away.

Arthur was sat on her left, loudly regaling them with stories they’d heard a hundred times as he swayed side to side. But they listened indulgently, smiling at his puffed out chest and the proud set of his shoulders. Her Arthur, loud and brash and soft all at once. He sat back as Polly started to tell the story of the time they’d stolen one of the Lee’s horses when they were young, seeming to shrink into himself as he fell silent. Evie could see the fear peeking through and it sparked her own, twisting in her belly. If she saw any more of that fear she wouldn’t be able to let them leave her in the morning, she would derail the train herself just to keep them there with her and far away from the gunfire and spilled blood. She shifted closer, bending her head to his.

“When have you ever shied away from a fight, eh?” She nudged his shoulder. Something fierce glittered in his eyes as he straightened and Evie grinned.

“Keep that fire, _ pral _, it’ll bring you back to us.”

It was late by the time Evie and Tommy helped Arthur into bed, pulling off his shoes and leaving him a glass of water as he started to snore. They shut the door softly behind them and stood there looking uncertainly at each other for a moment. 

“Don’t think I can sleep yet.” Tommy admitted quietly, dropping his eyes from hers. 

And so they took turns reading aloud, shoulder to shoulder in her bed with their backs against the wall, one poem and story after another, until hazy rays of light crowned over the horizon. 

“We should probably get at least a few hours of sleep.” She murmured, staring down at the book open in her lap. She felt Tommy shift beside her, fingers drumming against his leg.

“How about one last poem, eh?” There was a strained quality to his voice, a rasp that echoed in her own chest. His fear tangled with her own in the pit of her stomach, barbed and twisted and grating. She nodded and rifled through the books heaped in small piles over her bed.

“Have I read you any Tennyson?” He shook his head.

“Haven’t opened this one yet, myself.” She hummed softly as she flipped to the first page. Clearing her throat, she began:

“Break, break, break,

On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!

And I would that my tongue could utter

The thoughts that arise in me.

O well for the fisherman’s boy,

That he shouts with his sister at play!

O well for the sailor lad,

That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on

To their haven under the hill;

But O for the touch of a vanish’d hand,

And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break,

At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!

But by the tender grace of a day that is dead

Will never come back to me.” 

The words were brittle and trembling in the still air of the room, mingling with the shadowed corners and beams of dawn slanting over the floor, and her voice broke on the final line. Tommy took the book gently from her stiff hands and she felt her face crumple as tears finally spilled over. Tommy lifted his arm so that she could fold herself into him, bending his head down to rest against hers. She shook silently for a few minutes before forcing them back down, still sniffling as she raised her head.

Tommy pushed a few strands of hair out of her face. “I’ll not have you cryin’ for me, lass.” His voice was firm but kind.

“Sorry, sorry.” She said thickly, dragging the back of her hand roughly over her eyes. “M’not even the one goin’ off to fight and I can’t hold myself together.” He was looking at her with a kind of frantic intensity burning in his eyes.

“Promise me somethin’.”

“Anythin’.”

“Look after Pol’ and Ada and Finn.” She let out a shaky breath.

“‘Course.” He looked down at his hands, bobbing his head furiously.

“Good. That’s good. Pol’ worries, you know.”

“You have to promise me somethin’ too.”

“What’s that?”

“You have to come back to me. All o’ you.” She felt him tense, just the smallest bit, but she wouldn’t give.

“I can’t make you a false promise, Evie.” His voice sounded very far away and when she looked up his eyes were distant, as if he was somewhere else instead of her bedroom in between night and day.

“Please.” She whispered, taking the hand resting on her knee and threading their fingers together, feeling the calluses on his palms rough against her own. He blinked and seemed to come back to himself as he looked down at her. 

“I’ll not make a false promise,” he repeated, “but I will kick and claw and bite my way through. I will do everythin’ in my power to come back to you.”

The trip to the train station was a somber one. Evie couldn’t stop reaching for them, touching their arms and knocking their hands together. She needed to feel them whole and healthy beneath her palms, needed their pulses thumping against her fingertips to stop hers from running wild. John held her hand as they slowly walked down the platform, and she suspected that it was because his hand was shaking just as much as hers.

John had said goodbye to his kids that morning, and they were at Charlie’s along with Finn. Evie couldn’t help but be relieved as they stood there, she didn’t know if she had it in her to be brave for them right then. They all stood in silence for a few moments, tense and not looking at each other, before Ada broke and stepped forward to fling her arms around Arthur’s neck.

Evie felt tears creep up but she forced them down as she buried her face against John’s chest. He was trembling and she could feel the quick stutter of his heart against her cheek. She pulled back and put a bracing hand to his face, throat tightening as he seemed to lean into her palm.

“Look after each other, eh?” She whispered. John nodded jerkily as she let go, turning to sweep Ada into a tight hug.

Arthur had that fire burning in his eyes, chest puffed out and chin proudly tilted to the sky, but he softened as Evie slipped her arms around him. He ruffled her hair.

“We’ll expect your letters every day then, eh? Wouldn’t mind a package or two if you can manage it.” Evie’s voice seemed to be failing her but she squeezed his hand as he pecked her on the cheek. 

Polly still hadn’t let go of Tommy, but he was looking at Evie over Polly’s shoulder. His face was shuttered and blank, already steeling himself. The first casualty of the war. He finally shook Polly off gently, letting her pat his face clumsily again as she stepped back. He turned toward Evie and he’d barely raised his arms when she threw herself against him, knocking the wind out of them both.

Evie breathed him in, the familiar scent of leather and horses and cigarettes. They were wound so tightly around each other she thought they might never be able to untangle themselves. Polly would have to chip away at them with a hammer and chisel. 

He pressed a kiss to her forehead as she willed her arms to loosen, lips burning against her skin, but it was over too soon. She wanted to keep him there, standing on that platform and away from the fields and the mud and the smoke. She wanted to keep him there but he was already pulling away.

“_ Latcho drom _.” She hated how her voice shook. Tommy smiled, but it was hollow. His eyes didn’t crinkle.

“Goodbye, _ bitti chiriko _.” And away they went, stepping through the folds of steam to heave themselves up onto the train car. 

She and Ada chased the train as it pulled away, waving frantically to them as they waved back out of their compartment window, not stopping until their faces blurred into nothingness. And then they were gone. They walked slowly back, arm in arm and dragging their feet. Ada kept looking back over her shoulder as if they’d be coming back through the hills at any moment. Polly stood frozen and shaking where they’d left her, face drained of all color. Evie and Ada each linked an arm through one of hers, and together they set off home.

The trip back to Watery Lane was a blur, and the silence of the house when they stepped inside was just another sharp reminder that they’d been left alone. 

The first thing Evie heard was a high, thin keening, and she realized that Polly was crying. Not just crying but wailing, loudly enough to fill the empty rooms of the house. She was tearing at her clothes and hair and that’s when Evie remembered the two children stolen away right out from under Polly’s nose, the two children no one spoke of. 

Polly had lost her children and now she’d lost three more. Five children to miss, five children to grieve. 

Seeing her aunt breaking down into bits and pieces and garbled words knocked Ada out of whatever distant place she’d retreated to inside her head, and her own face cracked to let the sadness spill out. So the three of them held each other, sinking to the floor as they cried and cried and cried until they’d finished their tears. And then they lurched to their feet, pale and off-kilter, to muddle through the rest of their day. There was a business to run. 

Evie went to fetch the children from Charlie, tugging her coat tightly around her and turning her collar up against the mist that was spitting down from the sky. The thin cold of early autumn was seeping through the worn parts of her coat but she could barely feel it as she wound through the streets. Small Heath was eerie as she hurried along - it was full of women like her. They wandered the streets in a daze, tugging small children with hunched shoulders and pale faces. They were all just left waiting, hearts in their throats, for men that might never come home. Evie joined these women as they scurried down the street, hurrying to and fro as if pausing for even a moment would invite the unthinkable to catch up to them. 

Evie tossed and turned for hours that night. It was as if she could feel the empty rooms, deafening in their silence. She slipped from her bed and wandered down the hall to Arthur’s room, smiling to herself at its state of disarray. It looked like a room that expected to be returned to. She tip-toed past John’s old door, not wanting to wake his kids. Evie had gently encouraged Katie to sleep in her bed with her - four children in one small room was cramped - but they refused to leave each other’s sides. 

She stood in front of Tommy’s door with her hand on the knob, letting the cold metal bite into her palm. Evie didn’t know if she could stand it, his room empty and cold and waiting for him just like she was. She cracked the door and slipped inside. Unlike Arthur, Tommy had tidied before they left. The bed was made and the top of his chest of drawers was bare save a few photographs and a neat stack of his books. The room could’ve belonged to anyone, stripped of everything that marked it as his own.

Evie sank into his bed and burrowed under his blankets. They smelled like him - leather and horses and cigarettes - and she inhaled deeply over and over until she made herself dizzy. From where she was nestled under the quilt she could see the photographs on the dresser, and that was when she noticed that one of the three was missing. There was usually one of her set right between a photograph of his mother and one of the brothers. It had been taken on her birthday the year before, and she hadn’t been able to keep a straight face because Tommy had stood behind the photographer making her giggle. The man had been furious when she smiled at the last moment. Evie hadn’t liked the outcome - it was taken mid-laugh and the lines of her face were blurred - but Tommy had insisted on keeping it. It was always propped up against the picture of his mother, but it was gone. 

She could see it clear as day, Tommy carefully tucking the photograph into his rucksack, and Evie felt hot tears pooling in her eyes but she blinked them away, swallowing the hard lump that had sprung up in her throat. She wouldn’t let herself cry again - she refused to mourn while his heart still beat - but before that moment she’d never realized that as they grew up they’d grown one wound around the other like a climbing vine snaking around a tree, their roots and branches and leaves entangled. She felt as if someone had taken a knife and cut her cleanly in two, leaving her with only one arm and one leg and half a heart to muddle through the world with.

Evie hadn’t known loneliness since the day the Shelbys had taken her in, since she'd been surrounded by people who loved her and wanted her. But curled up in Tommy's bed she felt a loneliness sharper than she’d ever known. It cut her to the quick, hollowing out her belly and settling there, a heavy ache to remind her of the price of that love. 

It was overwhelming, laying there and contemplating the long stretch of years without them. So she buried her head into his pillow and breathed deeply, in and out and in and out, until sleep finally stole over her. 

When she woke in the morning to the scent of him that swathed her like the blankets on his bed, Evie almost expected him to be sprawled out beside her. But she was alone. She stretched out slowly, joints cracking and popping as she rolled her neck and wrists. She left the bed unmade and closed the door firmly behind her. She didn’t go back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRANSLATION NOTES:  
Pral - brother  
Latcho drom - safe journey  
Bitti chiriko - little bird


	7. Justice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What fuckin’ happened?” He growled, fists clenching and unclenching like they already longed to wrap around someone’s neck. There wasn’t a whole neck to wrap around, not after what she’d done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW Sexual assault and violence
> 
> Evie is about seventeen-ish here, and Tommy is a few years older

She’d insisted that she didn’t need an escort home, punctuated her begging with sweet kisses to the cheek until John and Arthur and Tommy had relented. So she left The Garrison on her own, humming softly to herself as she pulled her coat tighter against the late autumn chill. The moon was shining behind her and she walked in it’s beam of light over the cobblestone.

But all of a sudden the moon’s light was blotted out, and Evie barely had time to turn before a thick hand grabbed her curls like a rope through his fingers to drag into into the alley on her left. He was stumbling slightly, and he reeked of rum, but even pissed off his arse he was still stronger. 

She kicked and struggled and tried to scream but the back of his hand caught her jaw and stole the voice from her throat. It wasn’t the first time she’d been beaten, and in the arc of his fist she could see all of those who’d raised their hands to her, standing in the man’s shadow. He smacked her hard enough to knock her head back against against the brick and her vision spun as her head lolled on its neck. Evie was dazed but she could distantly feel him drag the hem of her skirt up her thighs. She willed her legs to life and the man grunted as she kicked out at him, catching the side of his knee. 

But it wasn’t enough, and she opened her mouth to yell again but he wrapped a meaty over her mouth and leaned in close, his hot breath ghosting over his face.

“No point in screamin’, lass, no one cares to come runnin’ for a pikey, not even one as pretty as you.” He leered, grinning to himself as she glared up at him like he couldn’t believe his good fortune.

He lifts his hand to hook a fleshy finger into her mouth, poking at her tongue and teeth and making her want to gag. His other hand went fumbling for his belt, and in the moment he looked away she bit down, hard, feeling the burst of bitter blood over her tongue and her teeth cutting through skin and bone. She heard him roar in pain, cursing and raging as he pulled his hand back fast enough to rattle her jaw.

Evie felt out of her body in that moment, felt like it was someone else slipping her knife from its hiding place in her sleeve and letting sing across the man’s throat. A red line, thin as silk thread, bloomed across his skin like a necklace. Hot blood sprayed out at her from his throat and he fell to his knees, clutching his neck as he choked on his lifeblood. She pressed her boot to his shoulder and he tumbled to the ground, his breath a wet rattle in his lungs. She stood there, blood soaking into the soles of her boots, watching as spasms wracked his body. Every one of his muscles was twitching as he fought against death’s grip, but eventually the spark of life in his eyes was doused and he went still. The moment the man left his body was the moment when she came back to herself, scrambling back away from the shell that was left and crashing against the wall in her haste. 

She’d never killed anyone before. She was an excellent shot and she could handle a knife like a second limb but she’d never had to take a life. Something slick and dark took root in her stomach as she stood there, creeping its tendrils down her limbs as her breath ran ragged in her lungs, staring down at what she’d done. 

With hands that trembled like leaves Evie wrapped her coat tightly around herself to cover the blood. She felt numb and heavy, like she’d been standing in the pouring rain for hours on end, letting it pound her down down down into the soil. She stumbled as she made for the street, her feet slow and stiff. She couldn’t go back to the Garrison, and she felt herself turn the other way to head towards Charlie’s yard. 

The walk felt years long as she made her way unsteadily through the dark, her vision still blurred from her banged head. When she did finally lurch through the gate she heard her name shouted and the heavy clang of metal equipment hit the ground as Charlie dropped what he was doing. 

“Easy, Evie-girl.” She could hear the alarm in his voice. “Are you hurt?” She felt her mouth answer _ No _, but she couldn’t muster any other words. He guided her to the fire that was lit in the yard and yelled for Curly.

She sat on a crate and huddled over the flames but couldn’t feel their heat. She heard Charlie send Curly running out the gate. He tried to coax words out of her but her mouth was full of the sticky blackness, bitter and cold, and it bound her tongue in place.

Arthur came barreling into the yard at full tilt, chest heaving and breath coming in sharp pants, to see her curled into herself by the small fire. His eyes were heavy as a touch on her, cataloguing her bruises and split skin and the blood covering her dress. She could see the rage simmering in his chest, rage like a fire he kept lit. He was stoking it as he looked at her, bringing it roaring back to life.

“What fuckin’ happened?” He growled, fists clenching and unclenching like they already longed to wrap around someone’s neck. There wasn’t a whole neck to wrap around, not after what she’d done. Evie’s jaw worked furiously as she tried to spit out the words. 

“I killed someone.” She couldn’t manage to raise her voice above a whisper, but Arthur heard it all the same. A heavy sort of look came over his face, like the sorrow was pulling his features downwards to meet the ground. His fire was doused. He reached for her over the flames, pausing as Evie flinched violently enough to nearly fall off of the small crate she was sitting on. He held his hands out in front of him and inched forward bit by bit, and in her near-delirious state Evie could remember Tommy approaching her in the same manner when they’d first met, all of those years ago.

Arthur took hold of her elbows, his hands devastatingly gentle against her, and she let him pull her to her feet. She thought Charlie might have said something, but she couldn’t seem to hear. 

“Polly will sort you right out.” Arthur murmured as they walked. “You’ll be right as rain in a mo’.” She thought they were still near the yard but then suddenly they were back at the house, and Evie was dripping blood onto the kitchen floor. 

*****

Tommy and John only noticed that Arthur was missing after they’d finished their game of poker, clapping the winner on the back as they rose from the table to find Arthur’s spot by the wall empty. They scanned the faces crowding the bar and wove through the throngs of unsteady drinkers, but their brother was gone. It wasn’t entirely unusual. Arthur often disappeared at the end of the night with a girl or went off to watch the boxing matches. There was no immediate call for alarm. So they shrugged and strolled home, the pleasant warmth of whiskey keeping the bite of night’s chill at bay.

That pleasant warmth vanished the moment they walked into the kitchen to see Evie sitting at the table, her face stark white and the blue fabric of her dress stained red. Tommy’s stomach dropped to the floor as he saw that the blood was still damp. He looked to where Polly was standing behind her with her hands placed protectively on Evie’s shoulders. Polly could usually hide her thoughts and feelings behind kohl and wild hair and the coal-black of her eyes, but Tommy could see her worry in the ticking muscle of her jaw. 

“Are you hurt? What fuckin’ happened?” John demanded. Evie started at his voice, swiveling her head to look at him, but she didn’t answer. Her eyes were perfectly round in her face, pupils blown so wide there was only a thin ring of gold visible. She looked lost, like a startled doe. He wasn’t sure if she was even really seeing them. Tommy slowly came to kneel in front of her. Up close he could see that there was blood matted in her curls and speckled across her face like a grotesque imitation of her freckles.

“Evelyn? What happened, _ chavi _?” He heard her breath quicken in her chest, raspy and scraping against her throat. He gave her a moment as she seemed to struggle to pull the words from where they sat behind her tongue.

“I killed a man, Tommy. I slit his throat.” She sounded almost bewildered, dropping her eyes downward to at the dried blood on her hands like she couldn't manage to understand how it had come to be there.

“It’s all she’ll tell us.” Arthur said shortly, hands clenching the top of the chair closest to him so tightly Tommy thought the old wood might crack under his grip.

Tommy’s stomach twisted but he kept his face neutral as he took her hands in his, rubbing his thumbs over the freezing skin of her knuckles. Her pulse was running wild under his fingertips where they curled around her wrists. He rubbed her hands briskly, trying to bring a hint of warmth back to her body.

“But you’ll be orright, eh? Tough as nails, you are.” He wasn’t sure if he was trying to convince her or himself. 

They managed to coax the location of the body from her, and while Polly took her upstairs to get cleaned up Tommy and his brothers went to dispose of the mess.

They found it in a back alley a few buildings from the Garrison, and for a moment they all stood silently and looked at the body where it lay huddled against the wall. Tommy was thinking of the leisurely hours they’d spent playing poker only a few yards away, stupidly unaware of the danger just under their noses. The man’s eyes still gaped open and his hands had fallen by his face as if they’d been clawing at his neck. The wound was clean and deep, no jagged marks of hesitation, just one neat line bisecting the pale flesh of his throat. 

“His belt is undone.” John said to the silence, his voice strained. Tommy and Arthur looked closer to see that the man was indeed in the beginning stages of undress. Rage bloomed in Tommy’s chest at the picture it painted. He heard a terrible noise rise from his own throat, and so did his brothers.

“Easy, Tom.” Arthur said gruffly. “He’s paid for it, hasn’t he?”

“S’not enough.” He muttered. Arthur sighed.

“No, it ain’t.” 

Even as they stuffed the body in a crate to drag to the canal, even as they weighed it down with rocks, even as they heaved it over the edge to disappear into the inky black water, it wasn’t enough.

*****

Polly drew her a scalding bath and sat there as Evie scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed, occasionally passing her the cigarette she was smoking by the window. Polly didn’t need to ask what had happened, the bruises on her face and arms and thighs told her enough. She’d only asked if they would need to go visit the woman two streets over who handled these sorts of things, and the tightness in her eyes had loosened the smallest bit when Evie shook her head.

The water turned a cloudy pink as she scraped at her skin, leaving a red ring on the cracked porcelain, but even when the blood was gone she couldn’t manage to get herself clean enough; she could still feel the blackness bubbling and growing, and as she looked down at her skin that was baby-pink from being scrubbed Evie could picture it creeping along her veins and clinging to the gatherings of her bones. She shivered. She could see the steam unfurling from the water up into the air, but all Evie felt was the cold sitting in her chest like it’d made its home there.

She felt the pattern of her breathing come undone, and as the panic started to rise Polly came up behind her to gently lift her to her feet, wrapping her warmly.

“We make our own justice in this world, _ chavi _.” Polly was smiling gently at her but it was watery and thin, stretching across her face like broken glass. “You and I know the terror the hands o’ men can wreak. He tried to hurt you, and you got your justice.”

“Doesn’t feel like justice.” Polly sighed then, reaching up smooth her hand over the damp crown of Evie’s head.

“It never does, little love.”

Evie tried to fall asleep in Ada’s bed that night, but Ada drifted off too quickly and Evie was left alone in the dark with the sound of the dead man’s wet gasps in her ears. So she slipped out of bed and left Ada to dream.

Tommy was still awake when she slipped through his door, but he started at the creak of the rusty old hinges. He didn’t need to ask, just budged over so that she could crawl in beside him, curling the blankets tightly around herself as she willed her body to warm.

“Will you tell me?” So she did. It came out in bursts and tangles and once or twice she had to start over but he listened quietly as she muddled her way through. 

She could still taste his blood, thick and hot and metallic as it coated her tongue. She could still feel it seeping through her fingers and soaking into her dress, the fabric sticking to her legs. It had stained her, had sunk in deeper than her skin. She would never be free of it, nor the ugly darkness that had made her its home.

“He would’ve been dead either way, Evie. You know we wouldn’t have let him live.”

“I know.” She hesitated. “I didn’t think I had it in me.”

“Everyone does, when their life is on the line.” She shivered.

“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to get warm again.” Evie whispered. Tommy hummed as he thought for a moment before climbing carefully over her to disappear into the hallway. He came back with the blankets and quilt from her bed. He piled them on, one by one, before laying back down beside her. 

The weight of it was nice, made her feel safe and hidden, and she began to feel drowsiness pricking her eyelids. She saw Tommy’s shadow moving over the bed as he wriggled down under the mountain of bedding.

“Better?”

“A bit.” He lifted his arm.

“C’mere.” She hesitated for a moment. She could still feel the man’s skin against hers, could feel his fingers digging into her hard enough to bruise. She didn’t know if she could stand the touch of a man right then, but this was Tommy. She slid against him obligingly, her arms still wrapped around herself. He brushed the curtain of her hair back from where it fanned out over his shoulder before letting the arm under her head fall straight out instead of curling around her, silently letting her know that she wasn’t trapped or stuck or cornered. 

His touch wasn’t like the man’s, wasn’t hard and demanding and sharp. She melted against him, needing every bit of warmth she could reap to warm her tightly coiled muscles, and let the tension she’d been holding slip from her shoulders.

She was starting to drift off when his voice broke the silence. “You think it’s tainted you.” His voice was matter-of-fact, perhaps a bit sad.

“I can feel it,” she murmured, fighting off the sleep that was starting to steal over her, “it’s sittin’ in me, dark and ugly and growin’. I can’t wash it off.”

“_ Chavaia. _It only taints you if you let it.” He whispered fiercely. “He was the ugly one, and I won’t have you lettin’ his sorry loss o’ life make you feel like yours is stained.” His voice was sharp as a cracking whip, cutting through the comfortable dark that cloaked them. For a moment Evie thought he was angry with her and she went to pull back from him, but the moment he felt her muscles tense he forced himself to relax.

“I’ll make this place safe for us, _ bitti chiriko _, it’ll be safe for you.” She didn’t know what he meant but his voice had calmed, softened like melting candle wax dripping over her fingers, so she closed her eyes. She held them shut and buried her face into his shoulder so that the world was blotted away, and he didn’t even complain when she stuck her cold toes against his leg.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRANSLATION NOTES  
Chavi - girl  
Bitti chiriko - little bird  
Chavaia - stop


	8. Pollyanna

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Polly's POV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is just a little baby chapter that i wrote in just a few hours but I had some fun with it and wanted to share!! I always want to know more about Polly’s childhood so I’ve made it up myself lol. This fic is honestly just pure self-indulgence at this point.  
**Aligns with the timeline of my other fic as well as the chapters of this one!  
I really liked the idea of Polly being lowkey witchy and also it’s around Halloween when I’m writing this so…let me know what you think!

Polly had always had a sense about certain things. 

She’d been born with a caul, a happening so rare and swathed with awe that the crones and aunties of half of England traveled to see it. They passed their wizened hands over her small head, cupping its crown in their palms as they told her parents she’d been born with a foot in each world and would always be able to see both. They murmured blessings and prayers and told her mother to bury the sac that’d held her in the soil beneath the trees. 

Polly hadn’t known her mother. The damp had settled in her lungs one day and never left, and Magdalena died in the height of Polly’s third summer. She had no true memory of the woman, but as she grew Polly had dreams of a vardo loaded with lilies that was burning to ash under a velvet black sky spangled with stars. The sound of wailing rose on the smoke, and she always woke with a cry of her own climbing in her throat. The dream was soaked in her father’s sadness, and when she awoke it lingered in her too. Sometimes, on mornings when mist clung to the ground and swept through the trees, Polly could see her in the fog. Tall and queenly and full of sorrow, Magdalena never spoke. She only watched, wild mane of hair blowing in a wind that wasn’t really there.

The crones told her that her mother had been a true witch, wild as a storm sweeping over the sea, the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter. They said it was no wonder she’d been born a caul baby, with magic like that in her blood. They taught her to read the leaves and consult the cards, and as Polly grew her sense served her well.

It was helpful when wrangling a household of children not much younger than herself; she always knew when someone was sneaking out for a piss-up, knew when she was needed to soothe the raw hurt of a heartbreak, knew when to let them have space to work things out for themselves. She could see the brightness of people, the thin haze of color peeking through another world as it surrounded them. It waxed and waned, mingling with the color of others. Arthur was a deep and rich red that pulsed like a heartbeat. John was a steady green, earthy and soothing. Her sweet Finn was a deep navy. Tommy was a shining silver that sometimes held a hint of the blue of his eyes. Ada was a delicate tawny. Polly couldn’t see her own, and she’d long since given up trying.

When she first saw Evie the girl’s aura was weak and flickering, just as starved-skinny as she was. Over the first few weeks and months, her color strengthened as she did, turning the deep, rich gold of her eyes.

Polly could sometimes see shades, cold echoes of people as they crossed the thin skin between the worlds. They had unfinished business that tethered them to the plane of the living, or they were just scared to pass on to whatever lay next. Evie’s mother hovered around her at first, sometimes as what seemed like a swirl of mist over Evie’s shoulder, sometimes as the weary woman Polly had known. Her mother never looked at Polly, just watched her daughter longingly, sometimes reaching for her only for her hand to pass through her arm. Polly never said a word to Evie about it, didn’t want her scared, but she always saw. 

Two years after Evie came to live with them, on a rare sunny morning when the children were singing happy birthday to Ada, Evie’s mother appeared behind her. She looked at the children one by one, bright-eyed and laughing around the table, and then she looked Polly in the eyes for the first time. She was so startled she nearly dropped the bread, and she stood rooted in place as the woman closed her eyes and faded. She never appeared again.

As the years passed, their colors changed with them. When Martha grew sick, hers weakened from its warm and rich brown to a pale grey, flickering in and out as she faded from the world. Some changed in relation to those around them; John’s grew brighter when Esme pulled back her veil to meet his eyes for the first time, but it was most apparent when Tommy and Evie were in each other’s presence. Their colors strengthened and brightened, pulsing like beating hearts as the silver and gold intertwined, tendrils reaching out to curl around each other.. 

She could see the knots of their lifelines as they tangled together, thin as silken threads, binding him to her and her to him. It began soon after Evie came into their lives, just a few strands shining like gossamer, trailing from one to the other. They danced around each other in the years leading up to the war, getting close but never quite reaching. She heard them sneak into each other’s rooms when night fell, reading and laughing and whispering. It seemed only a matter of time. 

And then the war came.

Polly’s sense wasn’t infallible. It couldn’t be measured or summoned or controlled. The boys left for France, and the moment they returned to the house without them it was like a cord had been cut. She couldn’t feel a thing, like she was set adrift in the fog with no sun or moon or stars to guide her home. That sudden, violent loss tore into her like a wound and she couldn’t help but scream and wail. She called to it but the sense didn’t come back. She couldn’t feel the boys while they were in France - tea leaves were no help, tarot cards were no help - their future was too uncertain. Fate was holding their lives in its hands, weighing and judging as it decided whether they would live or die there in the mud. Things that had seemed so sharp and clear were muddled and blurred, and Polly kicked herself every time she cast her mind out searching for them, only to come up empty. So for five years she held her breath, cursing her senses for abandoning her.

It all came rushing back as she stood with Ada and Evie on that train platform to see them coming through the steam, hearts in their throats as they waited with bated breath to see what would return to them. She could feel all of their hurts as she threw her arms around them, like layers of scar tissue where bits of themselves had been cut away, one on top of the other.

After five years blind the intensity of it was nearly too much. She felt Arthur’s anger as keenly as if she were breaking her own knuckles against walls and windows and jaws. She felt John’s terror as it rose to nearly drown him in the quiet moments, heartbeat running wild and erratic as gunfire filled the silence. But it was Tommy that scared her the most. She could sense his restlessness, like something in him had been knocked loose and couldn’t properly settle back down. When she held him in her arms on that platform, his face blank and sunken and cold, dread knotted together in her belly.

Her comfort was that that his lifeline still intertwined with Evie’s, but they grew muddled as Polly watched him shut himself away She could feel the depths of his wanting as they warred with his pride, his worry, his terror for her safety. 

In the chaos of John’s wedding and Karl’s birth, Polly didn’t catch the way that their lifelines had burned bright as a flame, only to fall away to nearly nothing. It wasn’t until a week later that she noticed they’d been severed completely. Not only a loss of love but the bond itself, years of laughter and shared adventures and trust fallen to dust between them. It sent Evie drifting through her days, not sure of her proper place if it was no longer by his side. She could feel the heaviness of his heartache in her own chest, strong enough to knock the wind out of her if she let it. But she knew both of them well enough to know when not to meddle.

And then one morning she came downstairs to find them sitting side by side at the table, elbows knocking together, the gold of her soul mingling with his silvery blue. Bright and vibrant and together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A quick edit - I remembered that Polly’s mom’s name is Birdie but I really like the name Magdalena so I’m just gonna keep it lol.


	9. Shell Shock Part Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “A soldier, a king, finding his way home. Back to the people he loves. Back to claim all that’s his.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place a bit after part one, when Evie understands their trauma a bit better.  
My last chapter, 'Pollyanna' wasn't showing up for me when i went to respond to a comment earlier but it seems fine now, so hopefully you can all see it and if you didn't go check it out!  
let me know what you think :)

Evie watched Tommy chafe against the mold of his old life. He chafed against Arthur’s direction as head of the family, chafed against him as head of the business, chafed against those of them who thought he was still the man he’d been before. 

It was as if he’d tried slipping into an old coat he’d outgrown. His wrists stuck out funny and it split across the back and the arms were too tight around his elbows. He wanted to climb back into the life he’d left but he didn’t fit quite right in the hole that’d been waiting to be filled.

Evie used to think of them as twin shadows, never one without the other. She would always say _ we _ and _ us, _ for they were always one and the same, the two of them. But then he went off to fight and when he came back it was _they_ in place of _we _ or _ us _, because things were the same but also fundamentally different; he was still Tommy and she was still Evie and they still fit together but the edges between them had changed, their borders in flux and boundaries shifting as they learned the bits of each other that had grown in the years they’d spent apart.

She’d always been able to read him better than most, and even quiet and aloof as he’d become she could still puzzle through the clipped words and blank stares that punctuated their conversations. He swung between shadowing her as she went about her day and going nearly a week without a glance in her direction, and she would let him be, knowing that most days he felt covered in wounds too raw to be inflicted on those around him. But that week of silence would always end with him stretched out in the safe darkness of her bed, hands pillowed behind his head as she read aloud, with the memory of his pipe and its sickly-sweet smoke sitting in the sliver of space between them like a living thing.

She learned that he didn’t like the quiet. He would pace back and forth through the house or shop just to hear the creak of the floorboards or drum his fingers against the table, his knees, a desk, anything. He was restless, needing to jump back into the fray, needing the fight and danger and risk. He was restless because sitting still meant things catching up, and silence meant pick axes ringing and shovels digging.

Arthur had been cautious with the business since they’d taken back over. They did well, but he took no risks. Evie could see Tommy straining against the bit, near quivering with desperation to fly towards something bigger. Polly could see it too, and Evie saw her own unease painted across Polly’s face.

Since the war ended he was always armed. At first Evie had thought it was a vestige of combat, of year after year living moment to moment and learning to treat life as a gift that could be taken back at any instant. Then she had thought he was expecting trouble, but Arthur was careful and no trouble was coming. She knew better now. He wasn’t expecting trouble, he was longing for it.

Evie still had the pearl-handled knife he’d given her all those years ago, treasured it and carried it with her everywhere. It lived tucked into garters and handbags and slipped up sleeves. She thought it was enough, but one night when he drifted into her bed he brought her a new present. 

“And just _ what _ do I need that for?” She asked disbelievingly, not reaching out to take it from his offered hand.

“To keep you safe.” Tommy’s voice was maddeningly calm. She couldn’t take her eyes off it, the metal gleaming menacingly in the moonlight cutting across her bed.

“I have the knife you gave me,” she raised an eyebrow, “is that not enough?”

“No,” he said evenly, “it isn’t.”

She looked at him carefully. There was nothing on his face to sound the alarm, just the shadow of an easy smile that almost reached his eyes.

“Is trouble comin’, Thomas?” She asked softly. Evie thought for a moment that of his smile might have slipped, but it only lasted the span of a heartbeat before his face had smoothed over again.

“You do remember how to shoot, don’t you?” She rolled her eyes at him. “Haven’t gone soft after o’ all those years without us?”

“I’m a crack shot and you know it you cheeky bastard.” A real smile bloomed on his face and for a moment it was like the sun had crested in her small bedroom.

“You’re a crack shot because I’m the one that taught you.” The smile deepened as she waved her hand dismissively. “Please, for me, will you carry it?” 

Evie heaved a sigh in surrender. She never could refuse him a thing.

“I’ll carry it.” She promised. 

“You should practice,” he mused, “I’ll take you shootin’ tomorrow.” And then he would hear no more, leaving the gun pointedly by her bedside and laying back against her pillows while she grumbled. 

“What’ll it be tonight, my lad?” She asked, begrudging affection rising in her voice even as she tried to tamp it down.

“Have you read _ The Odyssey _, Evie?” Tommy sounded lightyears away from where they laid side by side, and Evie knew he was seeing a different sky out her window, a different place.

“I have.” She said warily. He nodded to himself.

“A soldier, a _ king _, finding his way home. Back to the people he loves. Back to claim all that’s his.” His voice had dropped to a hushed whisper, but there was a crackling heat behind it, an anticipation that sent cold and sharp dread slithering through Evie’s body. Her hands shook as she brought the book to bed, but Tommy didn’t notice.

Polly and Evie huddled around the table as they eyed the package in front of them with distaste, scared to touch it as if its ordinary paper wrapping was hiding a bomb. It seemed to be sucking all of the air out of the room, and Evie’s knees felt weak and wobbly as she stared at it.

“You should tell him.” Polly said decisively. “It’ll land softer comin’ from you.”

“What will?” Even Polly was startled as Tommy appeared in the doorway, hair and coat damp from the mist spitting down outside.

His eyes dropped from Evie’s likely stricken face to the package sitting between her and Polly on the kitchen table, and even though he didn’t move Evie could see the tightness that rippled through his muscles like a wave. The silence fell so thick over the three of them she thought she might be able to cut right through it with her knife. 

“Go on then.” His voice was silk-soft and qiuet, and when he looked at her it was like he wasn’t seeing her at all. “Open it.” 

And so she unwrapped the brown paper with shaking hands to unsheath the King’s thanks for Tommy’s bravery and sacrifice. 

They all stared down at them for a moment, gleaming and perfect and out of place in their humble kitchen. And then Tommy moved quick as a whip to scoop the box and medals up under his arm, turning on his heel to disappear out the door. Polly nudged Evie to follow so she started after him, but he left so fast she didn’t have time to grab her coat from where it hung on the wall.

She ran, cursing to herself as she crossed her arms tightly against her stomach, teeth chattering against each other as she tried to ignore the biting chill seeping through the thin layers of her dress. It was an unseasonably cold day and that cold blew dust along the streets, swelling up under her skirts to lap at her bare legs. But he was moving quickly, so she hurried to keep pace.

Evie followed him to the canal, still swollen and rushing from the previous night’s rain. He stopped so suddenly she nearly knocked into him, but he ignored her huffed curses as he stared down at the box, held in a white-knuckled grip like it was a hand grenade. 

Evie was about to speak when Tommy cocked his arm back and chucked the box as hard as he could. It flew up in a tall ark and disappeared briefly in the morning fog but the resounding splash came a moment later. Evie pictured it sinking through the inky black water, a trail of bubbles rising in its wake.

His breath was coming unevenly, and as Evie gingerly edged closer to him she could see tears slowly rolling down his cheeks to then slip along the edge of his jaw, staining the collar of his shirt like rain drops. It stopped her where she stood, knees locking into place as she felt the world shifting under her feet. The planets must have been knocked off their looping paths and stars forced to arrange themselves in new clusters and trails, because Tommy Shelby didn’t cry. It would take an act of God or the universe to move the monolith that was Tommy Shelby to tears.

He sat slowly down on the wall of the canal, head bent to his lap, crown of his head bared to the sky and hands cupped around the back of his neck. She rubbed his back gently as they sat there in silence that felt thick and sticky as syrup, and she could almost feel him knitting himself back together under her fingers.

He stood after a while with a shaky breath and she followed suit, watching his features resettle themselves on his face. Once he properly came back to himself he looked at her, surprised, as if he hadn’t known she was there.

He frowned as he noticed Evi’s bottom lip quivering as her teeth chattered around in her skull. “You’re not wearin’ a coat, _ chavi _.” He chided. “You’ll catch your death in this chill.” She bit back an irritable reply as he shed his own to wrap around her shoulders. Before she could thank him he’d turned and started toward the house, leaving her to scramble behind him once again, because Tommy Shelby didn’t like to stand still.

  


Evie had always loved storms, vast swells of dark clouds and deafening peals of thunder that swept over everything in sight, lashing rain washing the city clean of its sins. She liked to crack the windows to let in the cool, sweet air, drawing it deep into her lungs like it might wash her clean as well. The wind always set the house creaking like it might topple over, but when the storm receded they were always still standing. 

She stood in the front doorway as rain that could only be described as biblical soaked the streets, smoking a cigarette and watching lightning lick at the earth. She heard light footsteps come up from behind.

“Don’t know why you keep insistin’ on goin’ out in the rain with no bloody coat.” Tommy grumbled as he draped said coat over her shoulders. 

“I’m barely out.” She waved away his concern, passing him her cigarette. “I had the distinct misfortune of catchin’ a glimpse of Mr. Langham’s naked arse through his window when I came out for a smoke.” Something that looked almost like a smile passed over his face.

“The man’s wife dies and he doesn’t know to draw the bloody curtains when he undresses.” Smoke curled around his face as he spoke.

“ Judgin’ by the wrinkles I saw he’s about two deep breaths away from shovin’ it himself.” 

“Good fuck, Evelyn,” a grin started to twitch at the corners of his mouth, “that’s...bloody terrible. You’re awful.”

But then she turned her head to meet his eyes and the small quiver of mirth running through them both grew into a ripple, until they both broke down into snorting laughter, and for a moment it felt like the time when _ they _ had been _ we _.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chavi - girl


	10. Mountains and Men

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And that secret was that Tommy Shelby, mountain of a man, was just as breakable as the rest of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tommy gets himself into a spot of trouble during the early months of their marriage

She’d seen him broken and bloodied, bruised and scraped, unconscious and delirious, but Evie could count on just one hand the number of times she’d seen him laid out in a hospital bed. She wasn’t even sure who’d done it, who he’d pissed off or pushed one too many times. All she knew was that Arthur and John had ‘taken care of it’.

She sat there, glaring at the stitches curving like railroad tracks across his skull, as she’d done for the past twelve hours. Bloody fool. Bloody man. Bloody love. But even as she glared her stomach twisted itself into knots, churning and roiling in her belly because she was terrified to her core of any injury that she couldn’t fix with her own two hands. 

Family members drifted in and out, as useless and lost as she felt. Ada had gently urged her to go home, and when that hadn’t worked Polly had insisted, and when Evie _ still _ wouldn’t move even a centimeter from his bedside Arthur had been summoned. He’d taken a firm, albeit gentle, hold of her arm, but he hadn’t even fully opened his mouth to chide her when she heard her voice slice through the space between them.

“Unhand me or I’ll cut your fuckin’ fingers off.” And he had, perhaps because she looked just wild and tired and half-mad enough to really do it. Evie expected his temper to rear its scarlet head - he barely had a handle on it these days - but his sigh was sad. He let her be. And so she sat there, staring hard at every bruise and cut on his body as if her eyes could will them healed. She sat there, cursing him in her head while simultaneously praying to every god and nymph and saint she knew the name of, bargaining bits of her soul to whichever deity let him claw his way back to consciousness first. She was praying, because there was a reason Tommy always counted on her to piece him back together, a reason he never allowed himself to be laid out, vulnerable as a newborn babe, in a hospital bed. His greatest secret, safely guarded as the golden treasures of a pharaoh’s tomb. And that secret was that Tommy Shelby, mountain of a man, was just as breakable as the rest of them.

“Evelyn.” She started, eyes spinning around the room until she remembered where she was. Hospital. Badly injured. Bloody man. John was looking down at her through her swimming vision with a soft face, like if he looked too sharply or too closely she would crumble into dust right in front of him. Evie narrowed her eyes up at him.

“I’m not leavin’.” He blinked at her.

“Yeah, I know. Almost maimed Arthur for tryin’ to make you leave.” 

Evie’s shoulders slumped, her small bit of fight left draining out of her. “I shouldn’t have fallen asleep.” John snorted.

“You’ve been awake nearly two days now, _ pena _. Earned yourself a bit of a kip, I’d say.”

“Meant to be watchin’ him.” She mumbled. He sat down in the chair beside hers and slipped an arm around her shoulders. Evie let herself slouch down so her head could rest against the crook of his neck.

“That’s what the nurses are for, eh?” And as if summoned by his words, one of the nurses bustled into the room. John and Evie sat in silence while she checked his bandages and examined his stitches, nodding to herself before hurrying back out to check the next patient.

In the brief moments when she wasn’t glaring at Tommy’s stitches, Evie watched the nurses. They looked like little birds, flitting to and fro in their pressed whites and their caps, dancing to a pattern she couldn’t quite see. 

They’d been giving her a wide berth, skittering around the edge of the room to reach his bedside. It was all deferential nods and lowered eyes, quick nods along with _ yes, Mrs. Shelby _ and _ at once, Mrs. Shelby _. Evie had always been a part of the family, but now she was entitled to all of the fear and breathless respect that came with the name. She couldn’t help but be grateful for it when the nurses checked his injuries twice as often as other patients. 

A high wail tore through the ward, the kind that scraped up the throat and fought its way over the tongue. It was raw and jagged and soaked in grief, rising and falling like the tide. It went on and on, as if whoever was crying was emptying themselves of their sadness, turning themselves inside out to get every last scrap. Evie could feel a wail of her own building in her chest, like a wolf tilting its toothy maw to the moon to howl along with its pack. She felt the sting of her nails scoring the palms of her hands but she didn’t unclench her fists until it died off. John squeezed her shoulder. She felt very tired all of a sudden. 

“The rest o’ you should get some sleep as well.”

John shrugged his shoulders gruffly. “We’ll leave when he opens those bloody eyes o’ his.” She understood. She couldn’t fathom the idea of him slipping away in his sleep either, not a man with as much fight in his blood as Tommy. Tommy would never go quietly, and normally that was a private fear that pulsed like a small heartbeat in the back of her mind, but she let it comfort her while he slumbered.

It was only a half hour later, when John had left her alone to find his brothers, that Evie heard the telltale rustle of the hospital bed sheets. His eyelids fluttered for a bit, straining and twitching until they finally cracked. She could almost hear the creaky groan of his stiff limbs as he rose through the murky sleep of the morphine to come back to himself. Relief flooded her body like a tidal wave as Tommy’s tired eyes met hers, and she let out the breath she’d been holding for almost two days.

Evie took his hand as it twitched to stretch out to her, mindful of his broken thumb. 

“You’ve landed yourself in quite a state, my love.” She smiled as she blinked back the hot tears suddenly pricking her eyes.

“Could you...water…” he croaked, throat rasping and dry. She filled a cup from the jug by his bed, bringing it to his lips so he could gulp it down greedily. Satisfied, he lay back for a moment. But when he opened his mouth again Evie cut him off.

“You can’t have a cigarette.” His eyebrows raised.

“And why is that?” His voice was thin but stronger, already assuming its mantle of authority. It was the same voice that terrified factory workers and doctors and roused their men to battle, but it didn’t scare her.

“Because you’re in the bloody hospital.” She hissed. He narrowed his eyes at her but she glared right back, unimpressed and unmoved. So he sighed and reached for her hand again, and just the simple brush of his skin melted her frustration away.

“How are you feelin’, Thomas?”

“D’you remember that time I stole Charlie’s favorite horse and it threw me off?”

“The Cobb?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, Charlie would’ve thrashed you himself but the horse did it for him.”

“Yeah, well I feel a bit like that.” She worried her bottom lip and looked down at the hand she had folded between her own. 

“And what about you, eh? When was the last time you slept?”

“About an hour ago.”

“Ah, and how _ long _ did you sleep?”

“Fuck off.”

The corners of his mouth twitched upward in a grin, but it was fleeting. She felt him run his fingers along the red score marks on her palms and couldn’t bring herself to look at his stern eyes.

“The doctors want you here two weeks, but they say the danger is passed.”

“So I’ll be leavin’ today then.” He grinned a bit at the frustrated little noise she made.

“Yeah. _ But _ ,” she glared again, “I won’t have you involved in _ anythin’ _ other than phone calls and paperwork in bed. D’you hear me?” He nodded reluctantly.

“Right. I’ll go sign the discharge papers.” She rose stiffly to her feet, joints protesting, to go call the rest of the family in while she went to do battle with the doctors.

The doctors weren’t happy. She heard a lot of _ but his injuries, Mrs. Shelby _ , and _ he shouldn’t be out of hospital so soon, Mrs. Shelby _, but she held her ground and tried to don the steely glare Tommy used to make men bend to his will. They wouldn’t have argued with him if it had been her in that bed. She knew that for a fact. They eventually gave in unhappily and she signed all of the papers and waivers, carefully noting their instructions for his medications. And they were off. 

Tommy let her fuss, and she knew that was his apology. He didn’t complain when she changed his bandages or forced his medicine down his throat. He let her fret and hover and he took it all in his stride. She suspected he resisted her less than he would’ve the doctors, she’d been taking care of him all their lives, after all. 

After he reduced a maid to tears for the third time in a week, she ordered them all out of their room until he’d healed. When they had to pass by the door they walked faster, held their breath, stuck to the edges of the hallway like skittish deer. 

She watched his body heal, cuts knitting back together and bones resetting, and as his bruises slowly faded from the blackened purple of a ripened plum to a light green-gold she allowed herself to exhale.

Tommy moved wrong when they were laying in bed one night, and his pained gasp as his fractured ribs shifted cut through her to her core. He saw her stricken face and even though his own was still stark-white he managed a grim smile.

“It could’ve been worse, _ bitti chiriko _.” 

“Worse?” Evie echoed in disbelief. “How could it have been _ worse _?” He held her gaze evenly, calm as a shallow sea. He was the only person in the world capable of looking stern and superior with half of his body wrapped in gauze.

“It could’ve been you in that hospital bed.” She opened her mouth but no words came out, gaping stupidly. She snapped it shut.

“It very nearly was.” He continued. “They were headed to the house, but I got to them first.”

“Better me than you.” She said shakily. He shook his head flatly. 

“I’d have burned every last one o’ them alive.” He said. His voice was soft but there was a heat to it, crackling and alive. She could feel it scorch her skin as she lay next to him. “I promised to always keep you safe.”

“This is the life, Thomas.” She whispered. “I’ve measured the risk, and this life together is worth it.” He reached his good hand out to trail his knuckles along her cheek.

“No. No one touches you, _ ves’tacha _. Not a single hair on your head’ll be harmed as long as I’m still breathin’.” Evie didn’t think she could breathe right then, his words were piling into her body and taking up all the room for oxygen. The air was charged with something, humming through their bodies as she snaked a hand up to curl around his as it cupped her face. His promise surrounded the two of them, tangible as woodsmoke in the air. And then the moment passed. He chucked her chin lightly as he drew back.

“Now.” He rearranged his features to be stern and solemn but she could see the grin fighting to poke through. “Nurse Shelby, I’d very much like a cigarette.” She glared.

“Three fractured ribs and a bruised sternum and you want a cigarette. Why I ever married a fuckin’ numpty like you I’ll never know.” He blinked up at her innocently, smiling slightly as he waited. She gave in, as she always did, throwing her hands in the air and grumbling to herself as she fetched and lit one for him. She curled carefully around him while he smoked, resting her head in his lap. He carded through her hair slowly, fingers warm and gentle, and she felt the stress she’d been holding in her limbs start to weaken under his touch.

He was reclined like a king against the pillows of their bed, long fiery beams of the dying sun streaking across him and washing their room in gold. The smoke curled around the crown of his head like a halo as it spiraled toward the ceiling, and she watched him as he closed his eyes and tilted his head back, sunlight catching the sharp angle of his jaw and the shifting muscles in his shoulders and chest as he moved. In that moment, fractured ribs and bruises and cuts and all, Tommy Shelby was larger than life. 


	11. Babies and Beasts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place maybe a year or so after my last chapter.

In all the years they’d been together she’d never fallen pregnant, never felt the stirrings other women did. At first it was a relief to find blood in her knickers every month. They were too young and the war was too fresh, the business was growing fast and there was no time for a child.

But as the years went on Evie began to question it, thinking that maybe something in her had been broken, or perhaps had never properly worked at all. It was an ache she couldn’t quite name, the ache of missing something she hadn’t even known she wanted. She felt it sometimes when she watched Ada and Karl, or when she held one of John’s kids. It was deeper than a conscious thought, this instinct tugging deep inside of her. It sharpened to a knife-point when she watched Tommy holding Billy or leading Katie on one of the horses. 

They’d spoken of it only twice - once as she begged him in the dim cave of their bedroom to hold his life more tightly, and once after Esme fell pregnant with her second child.

“I think...I think that maybe I can’t have them.” Evie’s voice had been small and wobbly in the silence. And he’d looked at her with that face he got when something really knocked him - mouth slightly open before it could fully form its next word, eyebrows raising furrows high on his forehead, hands stilling as they lit a cigarette or reached for a paper.

And it was then she’d realized that while she’d been questioning it, Tommy had already accepted it - already weighed and measured and considered the ramifications of her likely barren womb. He hadn’t questioned it, he’d welcomed it.

He’d looked at her a long while. “Perhaps it’s for the best.” His voice was careful, measured. Evie had jerked back like she’d been stung. 

“For the best.” She repeated hollowly. 

“The kind of life we’re livin’ right now is no fit environment for a child.” She’d had to concede to that point, there had been unrest in London and everyone was readying themselves for trouble but surely things wouldn’t always be in such a state of upheaval. It was the glint of relief in Tommy’s eye when she’d voiced her worry that she couldn’t shake. But there was nothing to be done about it, so she’d tucked the hurt away and soon it had been buried by a thousand other worries and preoccupations. 

And they hadn’t discussed it since, but the subject was tender as a bruise between them, sore to the touch. They danced around it delicately, both alone and with others. So while Evie’s first reaction to Polly’s words as they hung in the air of the kitchen was disbelief, and the second was terror. 

“I can’t be.” Polly raised an unimpressed eyebrow.

“And why is that?”

“I would’ve been far sooner.” Polly waved an unconcerned hand.

“It simply wasn’t your time.” Evie just worried her bottom lip and looked down at the mug of tea Polly had pressed firmly into her hands. It was good news, but it wasn’t at the same time.

“I don’t think he’ll want it, Pol’.” She couldn’t tear her eyes from her lap but she could feel Polly’s eyes sharp on her, narrowed and suspicious. If she were another woman, and this was another life, she’d be dancing around the kitchen with Polly, happy tears streaming down both of their faces. The sun was warm and golden as it spilled through the curtains and birds chirped in the bushes under the windows. It was springtime, when things were born and grew anew and blossomed. But she was not another woman, and this was not another life. Evie couldn’t feel the warmth of the sun, right then.

“But do _ you _ want it, sweetheart?” Her heart pounded in her chest as she turned the question round and round in her mind. Did she? Evie tried to picture it - a small bouncing baby with her hair and Tommy’s eyes. Someone to belong to, someone who belonged to her. Yes. Yes, she wanted it.

“I do.” Polly nodded like she’d been expecting the answer.

“Then you keep it,” she said firmly, “and hang him if he doesn’t agree.” 

Evie left Polly’s in a daze, and as she drove her right hand kept drifting back down to her belly, searching for some hint of roundness. It was too soon to feel the flutter of tiny feet, but she kept her hand pressed there all the same. She thought maybe she should wait to tell him, take time to figure out the right words, but now that she was certain she felt like she physically couldn’t hold the secret in. So she went to the office, her whole body trembling with nerves as she drove.

It was a calm day, just a few people working at their desks as Evie crossed the room to where Lizzie was stationed outside Tommy’s office.

“Anyone important in there?” Lizzie waved a hand flippantly.

“Just Arthur.”

“Ta, Lizzie.” She cracked the door and slipped through to find Arthur and Tommy standing over some schematics spread across Tommy’s desk. She pecked Arthur on the cheek as he raised up from their plans. 

“Orright, _ pena _?”

“Yeah.” She gave him the steadiest smile she could manage, but she still saw his eyes sharpen. He always knew, damn him. She shook her head warningly as Tommy turned to file the schematics away. Arthur shot her another suspicious look but didn’t press.

“I’ll be off, Tom. John needs me at Charlie’s.” Arthur squeezed her arm before taking his leave. As each footstep sounded through the room, Evie felt the unsteady resolve she’d build up crumble more and more.

Through with refiling all the documents, Tommy had settled back down into his chair, smiling up at her absently. He was expecting an embrace, arms already half-stretched out to her, but she hung back, her own arms wound around herself, starting to shake like a leaf as she dredged the words up from her throat.

“Evelyn? What’s wrong, love?” His brows knit together in concern and he started to rise from his chair. Evie’s heart was pounding so hard against her ribs she was sure he could hear it, would guess her secret just from her pulse alone, and she struggled to keep the nerves from her voice.

“I’m pregnant.” The next second that passed seemed to go on for ages, and she watched his face carefully as panic started to tighten like a vice around her chest. He fought to keep his expression smooth but Evie knew him too well to miss the flicker of that same panic sparking up in his eyes like a flame. He was silent for a moment but Evie was too terrified to wait.

“Please say somethin’.” She pleaded, anxiety raising her voice what sounded like ten octaves.

“Do you want it?” She let out a desperate laugh that sounded more like a choked sob, sad and scared and hurt all at once.

“Don’t you?” She could see his hesitation. He didn’t. 

“I...I don’t know.” She took in a shaky breath.

“Then what, Thomas, do we do?” He didn’t answer, just looked at her. And there was his solution. Evie must have made a noise, some small whimper or gasp like a wounded animal, because he started to come toward her slowly.

“Don’t touch me.” She heard herself say, cold, hollow. “Don’t fuckin’ touch me.” So he let his arms fall away, hands tightening into fists as she turned to stalk out the door. As she left, Evie could hear the angry crash of wood and glass erupt behind her, startling Lizzie nearly out of her chair, but she kept walking.

Evie didn’t want to go home, because home was the first place he’d look to find her. She didn’t want to go to Arthur, didn’t want to go to John, they’d be angry and uncomfortable and uncertain all at once. So she showed up on Ada’s doorstep, miserable and ragged from the spitting rain. Ada took one look at her and bundled her inside, giving her a dry dress and a hot cup of tea. It took a second cup for everything to come spilling out, and Evie found herself crumbling and crying into Ada’s lap.

“_ Amadoubellen _. I’ll kill him one o’ these days, I really will.” Ada muttered darkly to herself. “Barkin’ fuckin’ mad he is.” But she let Evie cry and rage as she stroked her damp hair, working out snarls and tangles with her fingers until all of her tears were spent. Karl was too young to properly understand why his auntie had dissolved into a puddle of sadness on his mother’s sitting room carpet, but he could tell something was wrong, and kept peeking around the corner at them from the hallway. 

“He’s just scared, Evie. He’s like a wounded animal when he’s scared. You know that.” Evie shook her head. 

“This was different.” She sniffed, wiping impatiently at her eyes. “Dunno if I can face him.”

“You’ll have to sooner or later, best get it done.” Ada said reasonably. “But if he’s actin’ like a tit again you can just throw him to the wolves.”

“The wolves?”

“Polly.” Emboldened by Evie’s reluctant giggle, Ada continued with a wicked grin. “He’d be _ right _ scared then. Just _ think _ about the sorry state o’ his balls after Polly takes her butcher’s knife to them.” And that was all it took to set them off, holding their ribs as they howled with laughter and rolled around on the carpet, going off again every time they knocked into each other. Thoroughly confused, Karl left the two of them there, cackling and shrieking like witches.

Evie phoned ahead to tell him she was coming home, hanging up before he had a chance to respond. He was in his study when she arrived, standing over his desk as she dripped rain onto the carpet. 

“Evelyn,” he began, and it was as if he was reading from a script he’d written and committed to memory, like she was a bloody member of parliament listening to him speak. “our life -” She cut him off sharply.

“Ada has Karl. Arthur has Billy. John has his whole fuckin’ truckload o’ kids. They can all have children so don’t feed me anymore o’ that bullshit about this life bein’ too dangerous, because that’s not it, is it? Why can’t_ I _have them?.” She didn’t care that she was begging, just needed him to hear the hurt. “I’ve been rackin’ my brain all bloody day, and I can’t think of a good reason why I should be the one who doesn’t get to have that.” He sucked in a breath, shame coloring his face, but he didn’t respond. He just stared down at his desk, and never in all their time together had Evie ever wanted to strike him until that moment. 

“Thomas Shelby, OBE. Can’t even look his pregnant wife in the eye.” Her voice was soft as silk but he flinched as if she were yelling. “Thomas Shelby, war hero. Can’t even bother to tell her why she shouldn’t have the babe.” Evie was being cruel now, and she knew it, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. His jaw was ticking as he stood with his hands braced on his desktop, but he couldn’t look up.

“Fuckin’ coward.” She whispered, but she didn’t bother looking to see if he’d reacted.

She made for the door, leaving him behind once again. He didn’t follow her, probably thinking she would flee to their bedroom or her library. It wasn’t until the front door of the house had closed behind her and she’d thrown herself into the back of one of the cars that she heard his angry shout from inside.

“Drive.” She ordered. The chauffeur looked at her warily but quailed under her glare. The car tore away, rock and gravel spitting up. She turned to peek out the back window as they drove, and Tommy was standing in the cloud of dust staring after them.

Ada didn't seem surprised to open her door to find a miserable Evie standing there for the second time that day. Just sad. She welcomed her in and lent her a nightgown, and the two of them curled up together in Ada’s big bed like they’d done when they were small, though their bed then had been considerably less comfortable.

“He’ll phone soon.” Evie whispered. “Please don’t tell him I’m here.” Ada sighed at that, but she agreed.

And it wasn’t long until the phone rang, even though it was nearing one o’clock in the morning. She heard Ada in the hallway as she answered, voice soft so that she wouldn’t wake Karl.

“Tom, it’s late. What d’you need?” There was a pause. “No, she’s not here. Yeah, I’ll call you if she turns up. Goodnight.”

Tommy called again the next day, and Ada told him the same thing. Evie wasn’t there, and Ada would tell him if she turned up. Evie knew she’d feel guilty about it soon, but she needed the reassurance of distance between them to think clearly. She wanted this child, wanted a piece of him that he couldn’t gamble away like he did the rest of his life. She wanted it, but Tommy didn’t. She wanted Tommy, but she also wanted the baby. Evie went round and round in her mind for a second day, listening to Ada field three more phone calls, until finally she couldn’t hold him off anymore.

She was holding Karl and reading aloud from his favorite book when she heard Ada answer a fourth call. She murmured something Evie couldn’t hear.

“That was Polly. Said Tommy’s near tearin’ the countryside apart lookin’ for you.” Evie sighed and gently lifted Karl off of her lap, and he scampered away to play the moment his little feet touched the floor.

“I can’t face him, Ada.”

“He’s frantic, Evie.” Ada’s voice was gentle. “He sounds like he hasn’t slept. Pol’ says he’s half-mad with worry.”

“Don’t care,” Evie muttered, but they both knew she was lying.

So Ada phoned Tommy and Evie went home, half-expecting a fucking army to have taken up residence at the manor, but it was just as she’d left it. She walked in and the maids scampered away, eager to get as far away from the impending eruption as they possibly could. Smart of them.

She found him in his study again, sitting behind his desk and staring down at a paper Evie knew he wasn’t really reading. As angry as she was, guilt pricked up her spine at the shadows under his eyes when he glanced briefly up at her. Darkened blue and purple, like ripened plums. She'd done that to him.

“Don’t be angry with Ada.” Evie said eventually, when it became clear he wasn’t willing to break the thick and icy silence that was near stifling in the air between them.

“Ada is not the one I’m angry with.” She bristled at his clipped words.

“Well let’s have it then.” His head finally snapped up, and even though she knew the fight that was coming she still had to stop herself from taking an involuntary step back. It was a look that sent grown men running, cold and dark and predatory like he was flashing his teeth at her in warning. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled. _Run child, run._

“Let’s have it?” He echoed. “Very well, _ let’s have it _.” His voice raising as he stood. “Let’s start with: you don’t run away and hide.” Evie glared back at him, voice raising match his.

“_ Chavaia. _I couldn’t bear to stay in this house with you, not after -” The loud crack of his palm against the top of his desk startled her into silence.

“Then you phone, you tell me where you’re going, and you do _not_ _fuckin’ go where I can’t find you!_” He roared, face twisted up like a mad dog. Evie found herself trembling, but she’d never been scared of him before and she wouldn’t be now.

“I’m not your fuckin’ property.” She yelled back. He glared, chest heaving. She’d really wound him up this time.

“No, _ darling _ , you’re my fuckin’ wife. The love of my fuckin’ life. And I didn’t know where on God’s green earth you’d run off to.” Evie felt herself wilting, shame bubbling up hot in her chest. “ _ Anythin _’ could’ve happened to you. You could’ve been dead in a ditch or stuffed in the boot of a car and taken somewhere I could never find you again.” His voice had lowered, fear dampening the rage, and her shame grew at the tremble in his voice.

“Anythin’ could’ve happened to you.” He repeated. “You and the baby.” And _ that _ was enough to set her off again.

“You don’t even fuckin’ _ want _ the baby.” She erupted. 

“Of course I want the fuckin’ baby.” He yelled. And that stopped her dead where she stood, mouth gaping stupidly as she watched him take a deep breath to calm fire raging within him.

“It’s our baby, Evie. _ Our baby _. Of course I fuckin’ want it. No matter how scared I was when you told me, that was nothin’ next to how scared I was thinkin’ about the two o' you dead and gone to somewhere I couldn’t follow.” He sank down into the chair behind his desk, one hand braced against his knee, the other pinching the bridge of his nose just below the furrow of his brow. Evie took a shaky step forward, and then another, and another, until she was standing close enough for his knees to brush her skirts. 

“I’m sorry.” She let the fight drain out of her. “I am, Tommy, I’m sorry.” He tilted his head back then and she knew he was showing her the damage she’d done. Evie forced herself to inspect the exhaustion ringing his eyes like bruises, the shadow of stubble over his jaw. She brought a hand up to cup his cheek tentatively, and something hard and knotted in her chest loosened just the tiniest bit as he sighed at her touch.

“I don’t regret runnin’, I needed to get as far away from you as I could right then. But I should’ve phoned. It was horrible o' me to let you worry like that just because I was angry.” 

“Never been so scared in my entire fuckin’ life.” He mumbled, and he seemed to wilt like her right then, exhaustion finally sweeping over him. 

“Sorry.” She repeated softly. Tommy let a tired smile flicker over his lips and he pressed a quick kiss to the palm of her other hand. 

“S’orright. I may have permanently terrified some o’ the men, however.” Evie snorted. 

“They were already terrified o’ you.” 

“True.” He conceded. She studied his face.

“Am I forgiven then?” She asked softly.

“That depends.”

“On?”

“On whether or not I’m forgiven as well. For the things I said. I didn’t mean them.” That was as close to a true apology as she would get, Evie knew. But he seemed so tired and sad and shrunken in that moment that she couldn’t manage to hold on to the anger she’d been stoking in her belly.

“Yeah. You’re forgiven.” He smiled up at her.

“Then so are you, _ ves’tacha _.” Evie leaned down to brush her lips over his, and for a moment they just held each other as the tension around them melted. He sighed contentedly when she eventually drew back.

“It’s late. D’you want to to go bed?” He nodded.

“I need to make one last call, I’ll join you in a bit.” 

He didn’t take long, and once he was undressed he curled around her in their bed, chest pressing against her back. Evie tried to let herself fully relax, but there was one last wound rent between them still to mend.

“I shouldn’t have called you a coward.” For a second she thought he might’ve fallen asleep too quickly, leaving only the dark to hear her shame, but then he shifted behind her.

“It’s orright.” She twisted round to face him, even though the dark shadowed his face.

“You’re not a coward. And you’re _ not _ going to be like your father.” She didn’t need to see his face to know the surprise sweeping over it.

“How…?” She shrugged.

“You forget how well I know you. Ada kept tellin' me you were just scared, and I couldn't for the life o' me understand why you would be. But that's it, isn't it?” A beat of silence passed as they held each other in the dark. Their talks had always been easier in the shadows.

“You don’t know that.” He said finally. “You don’t know that I won’t be like him.” She reached up to trail her fingertips over the curves of his lips, pausing their journey as he kissed them softly.

“I do know that. D’you really think I would’ve married a drunken fool who beats children?” She let him think about that for a moment. “John and Arthur and Ada are nothin’ like your father, so why would you be, eh?” He didn’t answer, but she could almost taste his tentative relief as he kissed her. Evie smiled against his lips after a moment.

“Somethin’ funny?” He asked, bemused. Their faces were still close enough for him to nuzzle his nose against hers. 

“No.” She smiled again. “But it just properly hit me. There’s three of us now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRANSLATION NOTES:  
Amadoubellen - Mother of God  
Chavaia - stop  
Ves’tacha - beloved


	12. Snippets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bits of letters and bits of time.

_ Tommy, _

_ I don’t know if these letters will even reach you, but I’ve bundled yours and Arthur’s and John’s altogether to be safe. Polly doesn’t trust the courrier but I needed to try. The business is doing alright, considering the circumstances. I thought the betting would slow to a stop but I think people need a distraction. Instead of factory workers and miners the shop is full of women - scared women, sad women, angry women. Women waiting just like us. There isn’t that much to bet on these days, so we’re making it up as we go. Finn’s right put out that he’s surrounded by so many bloody girls all the time, so we send him off to Curly as much as we can. He’s managing. We’re managing. We miss you. _

_ Yours always, _

_ Evie _

_ Tommy, _

_ The days seem to stretch until they’re years and years long. You’ve been gone two months but it feels like I’ve lived lifetimes in your absence. When you finally come home I’ll be wrinkled and gray, and my vision will be too poor to read aloud to you. Perhaps I’ll just be dust. That’s what I feel like most days, dust. I don’t want to whinge and wine, especially when the goings on here are nothing compared to what you boys must be facing in France, but I know you wouldn’t want me wasting pen and paper to write you rose-colored bullshit. It’s hard, but we’re alright. We’re cracking on. _

_ With love always, _

_ Evie. _

_ Tommy, _

_ I don’t know if these letters are even reaching you all. It feels like I’m screaming into a void that swallows up my voice and words. I would be half-mad with worry but we get the occasional snippet of news of the three of you from the wife of some factory worker who knows you or Jeremiah's sister if we're lucky. Finn still asks where you’ve gone. We’ve told him so many times but he keeps forgetting. He brought home a cat a few days ago. Polly tried to shoo it away but it came back after supper and strolled in, calm as you please. It jumped up onto her lap before Ada could chase it off, and now the two of them are fucking inseparable. Finn’s named him Jem. Nothing else to report. _

_ Yours, _

_ Evie. _

_ Evie, _

_ Thank you for the letters. Sorry we can’t respond too often. We read them aloud to each other over and over when they’re delivered and John has developed an impressive impression of your voice. Tell us more, even the boring bits we thought we wouldn’t miss. Tell Finn to get rid of the fucking cat.  _

_ Arthur _

_ Arthur, _

_ Even one rare letter is precious to me. Ada shrieked like a banshee when it came in the post, scared the tits off of Mrs. Langby as she was passing by. Not that she didn’t deserve it, that bloody cow. I’m sorry to say that we love Jem and we’re keeping him. He’s a good cat.  _

_ How are you? How is John? How is Tommy? I want so badly to see you all I can scarcely breathe. As for boring bits, even those have slowed to a stop. The rations are starting to shrink down, but Polly’s good at making them stretch. We’ve been taking to the woods with the Lee women when the larder is truly bare. I took down a stag a few weeks ago, hurt me to kill it but the whole house was full of the sound of our growling bellies. It hurts more to be hungry. You would’ve been proud of the shot - clean through the skull.  _

_ Your loving sister,  _

_ Evie _

_ Evie, _

_ John’s still a bastard and I’m fucking tired. Everyone told us it wouldn’t last this long and that we’d be home by Christmas. It’s hard keeping track of the days in the bloody tunnels but I know for a fucking fact Christmas was ages ago. When we’re topside, Tom rereads your letters when we have the odd free moment to ourselves. I’ve been telling him to write, but I don’t think he can manage it yet. Maybe soon. He misses you, chavi. We all do.  _

_ Also, John has requested that you shoot another stag and fashion him a rug from its skin. He also says a nice fox fur hat will do in a pinch. _

_ Yours, _

_ Arthur _

_ Tommy, _

_ I know this won’t reach you on your birthday, but Happy Birthday. We’d hoped to celebrate it with you here, but Finn insisted we sing for you anyway. Do you remember your sixteenth birthday? Ada and I helped you and John lift Charlie’s favorite gin and we snuck out that night to the canal. You wouldn’t let me or Ada touch a single drop of the stuff but Arthur plied us with the sweets he’d nicked from the shops, and that did just fine. What I wouldn’t give for us to all be back there under that bridge, safe and hearty and whole. Happy Birthday, Thomas. _

_ Yours, _

_ Evie _

  
  


_ John, _

_ You’d be so proud of your Katie, today. She fell off her pony what must have been a half-dozen times - only a few scrapes - and kept insisting she needed to get right back on. She has all of your stubbornness, thank God it’s mixed in with all of Martha’s brains.  _

_ Now, I’m telling you this first because Arthur has his temper and I don’t know what sort of state Tommy has been in since you left, and you’re the most likely to react calmly. I’m only telling you because Jeremiah’s sister will tell him, and you might as well hear it from me first. Someone broke into the house last night while we were asleep. Don’t know what they expected to find - it’s not like we’re sitting on a dragon’s hoard of treasure - but we woke up to them knocking around the ground floor. Polly scared them off with her gun, but we were all a bit shaken. We’re going to twist up the front doorknob with rope and fasten it to a hook Polly hammered into the windowf rame. It’ll keep them from getting the door all the way open if they pick the lock or break the knob. I already know what you’re thinking, and we don’t have a plan for what we’ll do if they come through the window. We’ll just all cram into Polly’s room and sleep with one eye open and a gun under our pillow. We’re all fine, so please don’t worry. And don’t worry about the kids, I’m not going to let a single person lay a hand on them, and by the time you come home Katie will be an expert horsewoman.  _

_ Yours, _

_ Evie _

_ Evie, _

_ You say not to worry, but that turns my stomach I won’t lie to you. I know that anyone who messes with you or Polly will regret ever having set a fucking eye on you, but we should be there to keep you safe. I wish we could be. As for the kids, you tell my girl I’m proud.  _

_ John _

_ Tommy, _

_ I understand if you can’t bring yourself to write me back. I can’t imagine what horrors you’re seeing and experiencing. I don’t know if I could bring myself to write about it either. But I hope you don’t mind my letters. I don’t think I could stop writing you even if I wanted to. And I don’t want to. It’s my one comfort in this strange life we’re leading, and I hope can begrudge me that. _

_ Books have become hard to come by, but I’ve managed to scrounge up a few in the years you’ve been gone that I think you’ll enjoy when you come home. My books miss you as much as I do, they sigh when I crack them open on my own. I think I’m becoming accustomed to you not being here, and that scares me. I don’t ever want to live a life where it doesn’t matter that you’re far away from me. Promise me that once you come home, you won’t stray far again. _

_ Yours always,  _

_ Evie _

_ Evie, _

_ We’re on leave in Paris right now. We only have just under two days off, otherwise we’d been running home to see you. I’ll tell you, sleeping in a real bed again is heaven. It’s a shit hostel bed but I feel like the bloody king himself when I lie down.  _

_ I saw Tom start a letter to you. He sat there staring at the paper so hard I thought his fucking skull would crack. He wrote a few lines, scribbled them out, and started over. And then he did it again. He threw it in the bin, in the end. Be patient with him, chavi. He’s trying his best. We’re all just trying our best. _

_ Arthur _

_ Tommy, _

_ I don’t presume to know the things you’re going through, or the demand and pressure put on you every moment of every day, but it’s been nearly six months without a word from any of you. Not a single scrap of news. Polly is near tearing her hair out with worry. Please, please tell us you’re alright. We’ve been luckier than most, please tell us our luck is holding. I’m sending Arthur and John this same plea. Please. _

_ Evie _

_ Evie, _

_ We’ll be home in three days time, on the five o’clock train. Thank you for the letters, I’ve saved every single one. _

_ Yours always,  _

_ Tommy _


	13. Wanting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Early days and sleepless nights

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi all, I’m currently working on another chapter that I’m really taking my time with so that I get it right, so here’s a lil bit of angst in the meantime!  
**set a bit before the start of Better Things

There were some nights when not even the sound of Evie reading aloud could chase off the crash of the picks and shovels. Underneath the soft rise and fall of her voice the digging still spilled through the walls of her bedroom like rainwater running into the canal, seeping between the cracks of the old wood to pound against his skull. Over and over and over, like a nauseating heartbeat at the very back of his mind. But Tommy would thank her and press a kiss to her brow, and he would pretend she’d helped although he thought perhaps she knew he was lying. 

Sleep wouldn’t come, he knew, but it wasn’t just the pick axes ringing and the shovels digging, it was the wanting burning in his belly. Because he’d laid there listening to her read, all the while trying to ignore her wonderfully mussed hair and bare legs under her nightgown, the intimacy swathing them so heavily he could pluck at it like the thick strings of a harp if he so desired. So he would wait until she had enough time to fall asleep before donning a coat as he would armor and slipping out into the night. He’d weave through the streets of drunken men stumbling half-dead into each other, drinking themselves into numbness. They would fall asleep on the streets or stalk home to beat their wives and children, helplessness becoming anger becoming pain. 

The Madam at the Midland knew Tommy well, had her bright lipsticked-smile stretched across her face before he could get a foot through the door. She was good at her job, always had something new and sparkly and bright-eyed to parade in front of him. She dressed them in bright flashes of turquoise and violet silk, sequined and tasseled, shining as he watched them. Loose-limbed and luminous, they were like birds-of-paradise or strings of polished jewels winking and flashing under the lights, the kinds of beautiful things he coveted.

He would turn most of them away - the ones with dark curls or freckled noses or eyes that looked like they knew him too well - until he found one that didn’t look a thing like her. One in whom he didn’t see the curve of her smile, whose chin came to a sharper point, and he flocked to her like a dying man to water.

She’d lead him upstairs. It didn’t matter that he knew the way, they liked to take him by the hand and lead him as if he were some poor, ragged stray they were coaxing along. Sometimes the girls would try to talk to him, drape him with soft words from pouting lips, purring up at him while they peeked with false shyness out from under the thick fringe of their lashes. 

It was best when they were blonde. When they were blonde he could drive her away, tear every scrap of her from his body. The girls were good at what they did, eager and soft as melting candle wax dripping through his fingers, and for a bit the scorch of their mouths hot on his skin was enough to quell the wanting that roared like a lion in his chest. Tommy let them crowd into his mind, welcomed the heat and the shine of them. But then he’d close his eyes and suddenly it was her skin warm and silk-soft under his hands, her hitched breathing sounding in his ears like a symphony, her hands slipping under his shirt to slide up his back, honey-sweet and quivering. Once she was in his head he couldn’t get rid of her, not even after he’d rolled off panting as he blinked away the swirling spots on his vision.

And then he’d leave without a word after tossing the roll of notes on the bed - nodding shortly to the Madam when she asked if he was satisfied. The satisfaction was fleeting, a momentary respite, for he would never be fully and truly satisfied. And the Madam would bow her head as if he were some fucking lord or duke, but really it was to hide her scarlet-lipped smile. The Madam made a pretty living on men like him, men at war with their wanting. They buried the wanting in booze and snow and pills and the mouths of anyone but the ones they wanted. Men like him were never satisfied. It was like she’d climbed inside of him and he couldn’t get her out. She’d sunk her claws so deeply into his core there was nothing to be done, for nothing could quench that thirst, could sate that hunger. He wanted her with his whole body - fingers and limbs and eyes and teeth - a distraction couldn’t change that. 

But the girls were sparkly and bright-eyed and they were good at what they did, so he nodded and tipped well and kept coming back on the nights where the reading wasn’t enough to lull him into a stupor.

The wanting took different forms. Sometimes it was an inferno, raging and spitting its hot tongues of flame in the crook of his ribs. Sometimes it was a serpent, slick and cold and tightly coiled, slithering along his limbs and whispering to them to reach out to her. _ Just one touch. _It was a beast when it was angry, roaring and howling at the idea of another man’s hands on her skin. It was the beast who’d driven him to beat and bloody boy who’d had her up against the side of Charlie’s stables. It had growled and screamed as it tore at the ground with its claws because the boy had dared to touch her. Sometimes it was hushed, the flicker of a single wick flame, warm and gentle and steady. It burned in the moments that belonged to them alone.

He wasn’t a good man. He wasn’t a terrible man either. He stood unsteadily somewhere in the grey and blurred middle ground, one foot in the light and one in the dark. No man’s land without a step in either direction. A good man wouldn’t let her welcome him into her bed nearly every night, wouldn’t relish each accidental brush of skin as they stretched out under the quilt. A good man would be better at putting her safety before his wanting, wouldn’t flit to her like moths to a flame. He wasn’t a good man. But he wasn’t a terrible man. A terrible man would take and take and take until she’d given everything. Her love, her touch, her life. 

The wanting whispered to him that it wouldn’t be so bad, to taste her just the once. The need would hit him with little warning and the strength of a tidal wave, leaving him nearly trembling in his seat at the Garrison watching the soft pink flash of her tongue as she sipped her drink. Tommy had read once about how the gravity of the sun was enough to keep the planets and all of their little moons set in perpetual orbit. Evie was a bit like that, a pull so strong it tugged everything close along with her. He circled her, never daring to creep closer and but never straying. So he’d light a cigarette and bring it to his mouth while the pull called out to him, pretending his lips were pressed against something else. The rush of smoke into his lungs was a poor consolation prize.

It was these nights spent swinging like a pendulum between her bed and the Midland when he longed for his pipe, longed for the brief warmth to spread through him like whiskey running down the throat. It was these nights when he was so tired and spent that his body felt like it would collapse if the wind blew too strongly against him.

But he’d made a promise not to use it, and Tommy wasn’t a good man but he couldn’t bring himself to break his promise and her heart along with it. So he tried to bury the wanting along with the guns firing in his head. 

Perhaps if the cataclysm of the war hadn’t ripped across the world like an open wound, Tommy would’ve given in to the wanting. He’d still have kindness in his heart to offer and a head free of mud. He could’ve worked with horses, could’ve taken to the road like his blood sometimes called him to. He could’ve told her that if there were a word stronger than love he’d use it a thousand times over. He could’ve, he could’ve, he could’ve.

He’d lay in his bed until the grey dawn crested over the skyline, creeping its tendrils of smoky light over the roofs and chimneys. He saw bare legs and lips flushed as rosebuds, the gentle curve of collarbone meeting the arc of the neck, the soft swell of waist to hip. If sleep came to him he could call the half-formed flashes dreams, but sleep never came, so he called them shame. It did no good to dwell on things that could never be, but he’d watch the light grow stronger and think of the man and his horses, the man and the woman he loved.


	14. Arthur

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this story is centered around Evie and Tommy but I just love Arthur and I’m still chugging along on that other chapter that I’m trying to get perfect.
> 
> Also I live for your guys’ comments so keep ‘em coming because they truly make me so happy thank u all

Sometimes Evie had to stop herself from looking at Arthur too closely, because a second glance had the potential to break her heart. He was fumbling at self-improvement, playing at becoming a righteous man. He was trying to point himself toward something better but he didn’t quite know how, and that’s how he stumbled into Linda.

Linda was safety for Arthur, the golden promise of salvation, but Evie didn’t like the way the woman talked down to him like he was a knock-kneed schoolboy holding out his hand for a slap of the ruler. She believed memorizing a few passages of the bible would crowd out the years of mud and gun smoke, but nothing could erase what had been written so violently onto his body. Evie thought to herself that sometimes Linda looked at Arthur like a piece of silverware to be polished - already perfectly formed, just in need of a little elbow grease. But Arthur wasn’t perfectly formed. The war had rended him limb from limb and then left him scattered over the blood-soaked ground to put himself haphazardly back together. Some pieces were set loosely and they rattled in their placement while others were forced tightly where they didn’t belong, despite his best efforts. But Linda didn’t see that, she only saw the snow and the drinking and heard his cursing. 

They fought about it often. It always started with Arthur defending something cutting that Linda had said or Evie pointing out that Linda had his balls rattling around in her handbag with her lipstick. Arthur had his temper and Evie was stubborn as an ox, and when they argued the walls seemed to shake with the strength of their anger.

There had been one day when the fight went on so long that Tommy stalked in and took her by the arm to lead her gently but firmly out of the office, ignoring how she tried to twist away from his grip to spit one more curse at Arthur. John had been watching them from where he leaned against the wall, smirking as his eyes flicked back and forth between them. He saluted her subtly as she was dragged unceremoniously out, eyes twinkling above the toothpick balanced between his lips. Arthur’s jaw was still ticking and his hands twitched like they had a bit of fight left in them, but Tommy instructed Nipper to drive Evie home for the evening, and to not let her back into the office under any circumstances.

“You don’t like her either.” She accused, pacing irritably back and forth across their bedroom. Tommy flicked to the next page of his book calmly, not really looking at her.

“I don’t.” He agreed. “She’s - what did Ada call her yesterday?”

“A cow?”

“_ Arva _. She’s a cow.” Evie tossed her hands up in exasperation.

“So _ how _ can you sit back and let him continue to see her?” Tommy sighed and reluctantly put his book down.

“Evelyn.” His voice was gentle but she felt the corners of her mouth slip further down to deepen her frown. “There’s no use arguin’ about it. He’ll just bellow right back and whip you up into a frenzy and after all o’ that he’ll still do what he wants. You’re just drivin’ yourself half-mad expectin’ a miracle.”

She stood there worrying her lip, arms crossed like she was trying to hold on to her anger as it stewed and roiled inside her. Tommy just watched her calmly.

“Come to bed, eh?”

Evie grumbled to herself as she shoved her way into bed and then grumbled more as he tucked her carefully against him, head slotting under his chin like it was made to fit there.

“The two o’ you need to settle this rift.” He murmured as she stretched and nuzzled closer. “I don’t particularly look forward to havin’ this discussion once a week for the rest of our lives.” A little thrill ran through Evie at _ the rest of our lives _, so she just sighed and wrapped her arms firmly around him.

“You can’t make me like her.” She mumbled sleepily as her eyelids started to droop. Tommy’s quiet chuckle rumbled under her cheek where it was pressed against his chest. He ran a hand lightly down the length of her back and she arched to his touch like a purring cat. 

“Wouldn’t dream o’ makin’ you do anythin’.” 

Evie did try, but fights still sprouted up like weeds. Linda continued to burrow herself under Evie’s skin like a sliver of wood and Arthur made it worse when he acted like the bloody woman was next in line for canonization. But Arthur was her brother, so Evie always forgave him for everything. 

There had been a lot to forgive after the war. She’d forgiven him for his rages and his storms of sorrow. She’d forgiven how he hovered and worried and treated her like she was fragile as glass. She’d forgiven him for the nights when snow had blown his pupils so wide his eyes were like dark and empty caverns in his face.

She forgave Arthur for everything, so when he proposed Evie held her tongue. When they were planning the ceremony Evie held her tongue. And that night, at their wedding, Evie held her tongue.

She found brief refuge with Polly and Ada and Esme. They crowded together at one of the tables, making sure to speak Romani loudly and unabashedly whenever one of Linda’s relatives slid them wary glances across the room. The four of them had been sternly ordered not to cause any upset that night, so they kept to themselves. And if they _ happened _ to call her a _ lubni _ then they reasoned that it was alright, none of her side could understand them anyway.

Evie was watching Tommy’s head bending to John’s as they waited for the bartender to slide them their drinks - she’d never have her fill of him looking impossibly lean and dark and elegant in evening wear - when she caught sight of Lizzie squashed uncomfortably in conversation between Linda and her father. Lizzie met her gaze with widened and pleading eyes, a deer caught helplessly in a hunter’s crosshairs, and Evie winced back at her sympathetically.

“D’you reckon we should do somethin’ about that?” She asked absently, only to look up and find the other women smiling at her like cats licking the last of the canary feathers from their paws.

“You’re a better woman than I.” Polly raised her glass in salute. Evie spluttered as Ada and Esme followed suit.

“You fuckin’ cows.” Evie glared, but their grins just widened. So she rose to her feet with as much dignity as she could muster and swept across the room, her dress billowing and swishing around her as she marched alone into battle. She slapped a bright smile on her face as she approached, pointedly ignoring the way Linda’s father looked her up and down slowly, his eyes heavy enough on her bare skin to be felt like the stroke of a hand up and down her body. She could smell the hunger gathering in his mouth and she longed to slice off his fingers where they’d wrapped themselves around Lizzie’s wrist, but Arthur had expressly forbidden her from concealing her knife under her dress. Pity.

“Pardon me for interruptin’,” she chirped, ignoring the furrow set around Linda’s mouth, “I’m afraid I have to borrow Lizzie for a mo’.” She tucked Lizzie’s elbow through hers and pulled her away to safety before Linda or her father could say a word. Lizzie’s hand was like a vice grip as it circled her arm.

“M’gonna name me first daughter after you.” Lizzie muttered under her breath. “He was starin’ at me chest like the dress would fall off if he looked hard enough.” They hurried away, giggling and snorting, feeling Linda’s disapproval sitting heavy on their shoulders.

Later in the evening, after many rounds of drinks, Evie swayed comfortably with Arthur through the crowd of dancers. She felt light as a feather carried on the bubbles of champagne, and the glitz and lights of the room were shining like stars as they spun slowly.

“I know the two o’ you have had your differences,” he started hesitantly, not noticing the way Evie bristled “but tell me. Is this a good thing?”

Because Arthur was her brother, and because she loved him, Evie placed a gloved hand on his cheek.

“It’s a good thing, _ pral _.” The relief in his smile cut into her, and something in Evie broke a little bit at the desperate hope shining in his eyes. Arthur, tall as the sky and angry as a rabid dog. Arthur, who could beat and kill and break without remorse. He was the most fragile of them all, and it made her ache. The sight of his wife made Evie’s skin prickle with distaste, but she would protect that spark of hope with every bit of fight she had. 

They danced a bit longer, but she breathed a sigh of relief when the partners switched and she was back in the safe circle of Tommy’s arms. Tommy who didn’t look at her as something to be mended or polished or sanded down. Tommy who loved her as she was. He raised an eyebrow at her troubled face.

“Orright?” 

“Yeah.” 

They turned round and round to the music, and each time she spun to face the head table Evie could see flashes of people: Arthur returning to his seat, Arthur reaching for a drink, Linda glaring at him until he put it down, Arthur’s head bowed in contrition.

“She’s goin’ to break his heart.” Tommy’s face had been content, almost soft, as they danced and held each other, but as she spoke something dark rippled beneath the calm for the briefest moment.

“I know.” There was something hard and painful in her throat, and it didn’t go away even when Evie swallowed hard.

“What do we do?” His eyes flicked down to hers, weary and heavy. There was acceptance in them that Evie didn’t like, because Tommy never ran from a fight but he knew a lost cause when he saw one.

“We wait. We pick up the pieces.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRANSLATION NOTES:  
Arva - yes  
Lubni - tart  
Pral - brother


	15. Paris

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (I'm posting this like a day after my last chapter about Arthur so check that out first if you haven't already!)
> 
> I’ve been posting a lot of angst so here’s some fluff to break it up! I’m having a tough time with the one chapter I’ve been working on for a while and these shorter chapters are helpful when I need to just clear my head, so I really hope you like them and that they aren’t becoming boring or repetitive. Please let me know if there’s anything you’d like to see or think I should switch up :)

Tommy had sworn to never set foot on French soil again for as long as he lived, but there he was, sipping a coffee outside a cafe overlooking the Seine. Arse on French soil. Evie had suggested Rome, Venice, Greece. Anywhere in the world except for France. But Ada told him rather sternly before the wedding that what Evie wanted more than anything in the world was to see the Eiffel Tower. Tommy knew she’d never ask no matter how badly she wanted to go, so away to Paris they went, honeymooning like the sort of people who didn’t live in the midst of shadows and smoke.

Tommy wasn’t one for holidays, but he let Evie lead him happily by the hand through the boulevards and twisting alleys. Paris was a labyrinth that contradicted itself at every turn - alleys that led nowhere and streets that circled back around to themselves. The city seemed like a living thing at times, twisting and curling out from the ancient center, pulsing with a frantic breath as people were pumped along its roads and canals. 

He fought a queasy sense of dread their entire first day in Paris, trying not to crush the swell of excitement bubbling up in Evie. His fingers kept twitching like they wanted to curl around the trigger of a gun, hairs on the back of his neck standing at attention as his body told him that danger was creeping up. At every moment he was scanning the crowds, unusually aware of the bulk of his pistol as it sat tucked into his trousers. 

But then they took a boat ride down the Seine at sunset. The gondola drifted lazily down the river as the sky turned into a vibrant mosaic of reds that faded to orange faded to purple faded to a deep velvet blue. Stained glass spiraling over their heads, more glorious than any man-made cathedral of stone and wood. Evie was bathed in a light so richly golden it seemed like syrup flowing over her skin, catching the tilt of her cheekbones and deepening the shadows of her face. Bits of red gleamed where her curls caught the dying light, and as they rounded a bend the sun seemed to take its rightful place behind her head, it’s final rays bursting from her like a halo. 

And suddenly Tommy thought he could stay in Paris as long as she wanted, could fucking live there if he got to look at her like that every day.

Their room was beautiful and open and breezy in the way that French architecture seemed to favor. A soft wind blew in from the open doors of the balcony, filling the room with a cool and sweet air. The drapes fluttered out like the thinnest gossamer, delicate wings of a dragonfly, and carried the sounds of the streets below. Tommy locked the door behind them and time seemed to slow, stretching out like thick ribbons of toffee as Evie turned to him, and in the moonlight spilling through the wide windows she became something more. Something half-wild and unknowable that didn’t quite belong to their world, something watching him languidly like a predator sizing up their next meal. His skin prickled as she cocked her head to the side.

She shed each layer one by one as she backed slowly away from him, eyes dark and flint-sharp on his, her own wanting peeking through. He wanted to drown in that look, let it swallow him up and drag him down into its depths.

She was moving tantalizingly slowly, making sure he saw each brush of silk as it flowed down her body, devoured each bit of skin as it was bared. Dress, stockings, garter, slip, knickers, until the floor wore her clothes and she wore nothing,

Tommy exhaled heavily as she stood there, outlined in sharp relief by the lights of the city behind her. 

“Sometimes I swear you’re a fuckin’ dream.” His voice rasped up his throat, hoarse in the cool air.

“A dream, am I?” 

“Best dream I’ve ever had.” He whispered. And then he was right in front of her. She was all he could see, scatterings of freckles and cherry-painted lips that he wanted to bite, wanted to see if they came away tasting as sweet as they looked. The world outside could’ve crumbled to dust in that moment and Tommy wouldn’t have noticed, or even fucking cared, because everything he needed was right under his hands.

They shared a cigarette afterwards, tangled together among the rumpled sheets as the lit end burnt red in the dim light. Her head was pillowed against his chest, hair wild and fanned out around it like a crown. He scrutinized her for a moment and she grinned up at him as he stared, blowing a column of smoke that spiraled lazily to the ceiling. 

“Are you sure you’re real?” She raised an eyebrow.

“Far as I know.”

“Look like one o’ the fairy folk.” He reached out to where her hand rested against his hip to circle her wrist with his fingers. “Small enough to be one too.”

They fell asleep like that after Tommy snuffed out the cigarette, and when they woke to the pale morning light his hand was still cradling her wrist.

They couldn’t stay longer than a few days, Alfie was waiting impatiently for Tommy to return, probably barely restraining himself from calling their hotel and barking at him from the other side of the Channel. There was a job waiting for the two of them, but Alfie could wait three days, would _ have _ to wait three days.

They drank wine - Tommy didn’t care for wine but Evie did, so he ordered bottle after bottle - and took long strolls and spent their evenings soaked in moonlight and the heat of each other’s skin. He bought her dresses that matched her eyes and enough books that they needed to buy another trunk.

Tommy wasn’t one for sightseeing, but there was something to be said for watching Evie marvel at the decadence and detail of the Louvre and its art.

He committed it to memory, the sight of her standing, dwarfed, in front of “The Raft of the Medusa” with wonder burning in her face, eyes perfectly round and earnest as they stared. He tucked it away for a rainy day when happiness might be hard to come by. And because he had a lot of those days, Tommy did the same when she first set her sights on the Venus de Milo. He watched her drink it in and was reminded of the night before, her standing in the moonlight looking like she’d been sculpted by the world’s greatest artists, the living and breathing image of the Venus de Milo. Every line and curve and ripple of muscle perfectly formed. But if he told her that she’d scoff and smack his arm while pretending that flush wasn’t spreading like paint smudges over her cheeks. So he hung back and buried the smile poking at his mouth and agreed when she said it was the most incredible thing she’d ever seen. 

“There’s a big world outside o’ Small Heath.” There was a funny tone to her voice, wistful and sad and awe-struck all at once. She was watching the raindrops run in rivulets down the window of their train compartment, the English countryside flashing grey and green as they flew by. Birmingham grew larger in the distance every second. Tommy tried unsuccessfully to stifle the fond smile rising up as she absentmindedly stroked her thumb across the ridge of his knuckles. He squeezed her hand.

“I’ll give you it all, _ ves’tacha _.” Evie looked at him then, smiling a bit like he’d said something funny. 

“The world?”

“The whole world.” He confirmed. Her smile widened.

“Even the Antarctic?”

“You want the Antarctic?” She shrugged easily.

“Wouldn’t mind a penguin.

“Then you’ll have the Antarctic.” Tommy said agreeably. He could tell she liked this game by the way she laughed.

“How ‘bout Egypt?”

“Because o’ the mummies?”

“Love a mummy.” 

He chuckled. “Then it’s yours.” She watched him for a bit, smile sliding into something softer. But then it waned a bit.

“Alfie will be waitin’ for you.” He could hear her struggling to keep her voice even but the worry coursed underneath as it always did. 

“He will.” She bobbed her head forcefully.

“Orright.” Tommy wanted that smile to come back so he squeezed her hand again.

“Need to keep the money flowin’ in, Evelyn. So that I can give you penguins and mummies and all the rest o’ the world along with them.” She managed an almost-smile, but it was a hollow and brittle thing, and it sat like a rock in his stomach.

“Don’t need the whole world, Thomas. Just you.”


	16. Bad Omens

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fear overshadows Evie’s pregnancy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HELLOOOOO I’ve been working on this chapter for…...ages. So please please PLEASE leave me a comment letting me know what you think :)  
*note - will-o-wisps are supposedly an omen of death (there are a million other meanings but this one fit my need lol)

It’d been going right through the night and day, on and on with seemingly no end in sight. Tommy paced the length of the library, back and forth as if the creak of the floorboards could quell his worry, while Arthur and John sat side by side, tense and stiff as knotted wood. Finn hovered anxiously by the door with his hands stuffed in his pockets and Michael was hunched over in a chair by the fire, shoulders curling in on themselves as he fought off a wince at every little noise. 

Tommy had burned through most of his cigarettes, and together they’d drank their way through a staggering amount of whiskey, but on it went. Evie’s screams were ripping him wide open, shredding his nerves to ribbons, and he shuddered as each one sliced through him like a blade. Sharp, thin, cold. So he tried to smoke out the panic and when that didn’t work he tried to drown it, burn it from the inside out.

He’d heard her yell and wail and cry out before but this was different, there was a raw and desperate fear beating underneath, instinct clawing for its life. Ada and Polly and Esme were with her, all women who’d lived the same pain, but Tommy couldn’t manage to find comfort in that. This wasn’t something she could run from or an enemy soldier he could break with his hands, nature had to take its course. But nature was taking a bloody long time.

All of them stiffened each time a new scream tore through the house. His brothers had tried to coax him away for the night. “Don’t wanna be among women when there’s a babe comin’.” Arthur had said, but none of them moved a muscle. No one wanted to stray or turn their backs for even a moment, all of them frozen in their helplessness, hearts pounding out the uneven beat of their fear as they tightened their fists against an adversary they couldn’t see or touch. 

Surely it should be over by now. Tommy knew nothing of babies he remembered that Martha and Esme had delivered John’s children in what seemed like half the time. But Evie seemed to be straining and heaving and clawing her way through, and he didn’t know how much longer she could hold out. Tommy made frantic promises in the back of his head. To a God he no longer believed in, to his mother, to the gods Polly held, nameless and primoridal. To the beings who played out their lives like marionettes on their strings. He’d give them whatever they wanted - prayers, offerings, bits of his own soul. He swore silently that if she lived they wouldn’t try for another - nothing was worth this, he felt her pain as keenly as if it were his own body being torn in two. But he welcomed it like an honored guest, ushered it in as if allowing it to wrap around his bones it would leave her with a moment of peace.

He dragged himself to the window, resting his brow against the cool glass. He could see them out there, flickering and burning like a flame struggling against a wind. They taunted him.

  
  


Evie’s pregnancy had been fairly smooth, broken up by only a few bouts of morning sickness and teary mood swings, and Tommy had dared to hope that perhaps the birth would be just as kind. A swell of pride grew in his chest along with her belly, and at night Tommy would sleep pressed up against her back, fitting himself to her so that he could wind a hand round to cup at the growing roundness.

“Who d’you think it’ll look like?” She’d always ask, voice brimming with hushed awe. And although she asked nearly every day Tommy always answered the same.

“You, if it has any luck at all.” And she’d laugh his favorite laugh as he chucked her chin lightly, the one that was soft as velvet under the fingertips, warming the bare and dusty corners of him where it sank beneath his skin.

  
  


He stumbled across her in the library one afternoon, feet propped up on a cushy footstool - they’d been aching more and more- and a book open in one hand. He hung back behind the crack in the door as he heard her voice, soft and gentle against the quiet crackling of the flames in the grate, because he realized with a jolt that she was reading to the baby.

He couldn’t quite make out the words, but the tender love draping her face as she glanced down at the belly she was cradling with her free hand stopped Tommy where he stood. He was distantly aware of the cold of the metal doorknob biting into his palm, but he couldn’t move. It was like she was weaving a spell, entrapping him and inviting him closer, but the moment felt intensely private. So he watched for another moment before easing the door closed silently, something warm and soft glowing inside of him.

One evening he caught a flash of lights out the window of the study, but when he called to Frances to ask if a car approached he was met with confusion.

“There’s no one out there, sir.” He’d raised an eyebrow in a way that normally made the poor woman shrink, but she gestured to the window behind him.

“See for yourself, sir.” So he turned, and where before there had been twin lights moving steadily through the spitting clouds of fog, there was nothing.

Frances spared a timid smile as he dismissed her, shaking the whiskey cloud from his head, but when he turned back again he saw the same lights, moving in and out of the shadows over the fields. Dread knotted cold and hard in his belly as he watched them, although Tommy didn’t understand why. 

What had looked to Tommy to be headlights now seemed disjointed balls of light, circling and dipping and leaping like children in play. They seemed to blur as he focused on them, but still he strained and squinted until a small ache bloomed to life between his eyes. He blinked hard, and they were fully gone, but the sense of dread they brought was not. 

“Pol’ wants to name it.” Evie announced one evening after she’d finished reading him a chapter of _ Jane Eyre _, book propped open atop the mountain of her belly.

Tommy snorted. “And what exactly did she have in mind?” It was the middle of the night and a nightmare had left him panting and drenched in cold sweat, reaching blindly out to Evie as he coughed a strangled cry from his throat. She held him close and spilled soothing whispers until his heartbeat calmed under her fingertips. And then she picked the book from the teetering pile next to her side of the bed, reading softly with one hand curled over the top of his thigh.

“Pollyanna.” Tommy didn’t miss her giggle as he rolled his eyes.

“Fuckin’ christ.” He rubbed wearily at his face, his hands still shaking from the dreams. They always left his mind a little muddled, lingered around the edges of his vision like storm clouds.

“She said you’d say no.” Evie said mildly. 

“Then why’d she waste her breath?” 

“Over the moon about the baby. Says she’ll be a spitfire when she’s older.”

“Doesn’t mean she gets to -” His hand stilled and he snapped his head up to look at her.

“She?” A smile broke out over her face, big and bright as the sun as she nodded. 

“She.” Evie confirmed. Tommy let his head fall back, dazed like someone had whacked him over the back of the skull. Evie ruffled a hand through his hair and he turned to grin at her.

“She.” He echoed, testing the word in his mouth. A girl, a daughter, _ their _ daughter. Happiness and something else. Something that felt like a knot being undone, aching joints cracking free, the first inhale of a cigarette. Relief. Relief, spreading cool as water over his body. Silence fell comfortable between them for a bit as Evie put the book away and shifted so that he could curl around her, darkness enveloping them once again.

“M’glad it’s not a boy.” He whispered, half to himself, but as he spoke his lips brushed the tip of her ear and he could tell she heard by the way her skin prickled under his hands. 

“How’s that, my love?” The heft of her belly prevented her from turning easily to face him, but she laid a hand on top of his where it fell over her hip.

“Boys become soldiers, boys go off to war.” He felt the lines of his muscles tense under her fingers, shoulders stiffening as his words sunk in. “Can’t protect a son from that.”

“We’re not at war, Thomas.” Evie whispered, but it sounded like she was trying to reassure herself more than him.

“Not yet.” 

  
  


Lines of tension began to appear between her brows and bracketed the edges of her lips as the months slipped by. Polly promised the two of them over and over again that she would be there when it was time, and while she managed to smooth worry from Evie’s face her words did nothing to settle the fear winding round Tommy like a chain. Tighter and tighter, cracking his ribs as they yielded to the pressure, squeezing the breath from his body.

“You have to be there, Pol’.” He could barely hear himself over the pinpricks of rain beating against the study windows. “Because I can’t protect her from this. I’ve been havin’ bad dreams. Dreams about the baby.”

“Thomas…” Polly’s voice was uneasy, and when he glanced back at her she was worrying the small bag of herbs she’d brought to steep for Evie. Said something about them easing labor pains later on. His eyes slid back down to his hands.

“D’you remember the stories you told us about the will-o-wisps, Polly?” Her sharp intake of breath cleaved through the space between them. “I always thought it was just a story to scare us into behavin’. But I keep seein’ them out in the fields. Floatin’ by the windows. Tauntin’ me.” The air seemed to disappear from the room, and suddenly Tommy could hear every drop of rain against the glass, every breath Polly took, loud as thunder. He could almost taste the bitter fear that was spreading like a weed through her body. But he had to force himself to take a breath because when he looked up to meet her eyes Polly looked properly fucking rattled.

“Stop that. Stop.” She said sternly, but Tommy could still see her hands shake as she pointed a threatening finger at him. “She’s goin’ to be just fine. I won’t hear another word o’ this.”

So he didn’t bring it up again, but he would still see them out in the fields. It was like they existed just under the skin of the world, pulsing with an unearthly light but flickering out of sight if he focused on it too intently. He didn’t say a word about them in the days and weeks that followed, but sometimes he caught Polly looking out the window.

  
  
  


All of a sudden, somewhere in the very early morning, the screaming stopped. It didn’t soften or wane, but rather sounded like the end of it had been chopped off. It was violent and abrupt and Tommy’s heart hammered loudly in his ribcage. He turned to his brothers to find Arthur near rising out of his seat, full of panic he didn’t know what to do with. John’s face was stark white before he buried it in his hands. 

“Tom…” Finn started to say something but fell silent as Tommy whirled around, half-crazed.

“Don’t even fuckin’ _ think _ it.” He snarled, brandishing his cigarette like a weapon, and Finn put his hands up in surrender to lean back against the wall. Michael ducked his head to avoid his anger, or maybe just to hide the dread on his face. Tommy sank down onto the sofa between Arthur and John, pinching the bridge of his nose as his head throbbed with exhaustion. 

After a long while Polly came into the room looking like a guardian angel, or maybe death brandishing its sharp scythe, Tommy couldn’t tell which was visiting them. She was wearing an apron covered with splotches of dark blood that drew his gaze like a target and deep bruises circling her eyes like a mask. His breath seemed to stick in his throat. Anger flared to life on her face at the sight of the whiskey bottle open between them and for a moment she seemed tall as the ceiling, filling the room with accusation and fury.

“_ Amadoubellen. _Nice of you to drink yourself into a stupor while your wife was tearin' herself apart just upstairs.” She hissed, but the anger seemed to waver at the terrible noise that rose from Tommy’s throat. 

“Leave him be, Pol’” John mumbled, “can’t you see he’s half-mad with worry?” They all were, the whiskey hadn’t numbed it like they’d hoped. Polly sighed.

“Is she…?”

“She’s orright.” He let the knots in his chest unspool, dragging a hand over his face like he could rub off the worry. The tide of relief seemed to ripple through the room, and they all loosened their fists and shook the tension from where they’d been holding it tightly in their shoulders. Arthur reached to clap Tommy gruffly on the back as he let a slow sigh slip from his mouth, shaking his head roughly like he could shake the sound of her screams right out of his ears. 

Tommy wished he could shake them out as well. “Those screams, Pol...” Tommy’s voice trailed off, fighting the queasiness twisting his stomach. Poll’s mouth pressed into a thin line as she closed her eyes for a moment, seeming to stiffen like she was fighting off a shudder. He didn’t miss the way her eyes flicked to the window when they opened again.

“The baby was breech.” Her voice was grim. “Touch and go for a bit, but she’s strong. She’ll be fine.”

“Is she not fine now?” Tommy didn’t realize his voice was rising until John’s hand snaked up to wrap around his arm, as if he meant to hold him down into his seat.

Polly was unfazed. “As fine as she can be,” she said tiredly, “childbirth is a brutal thing.” She smiled then, as gentle as she ever was with him. “Would you like to come and see them?” _ Them _.

The walk up the stairs seemed to take decades, the stairwell and hallways stretching out and out like tunnels . His knees shook with each step as he followed Polly, like a lost ship to a beaming lighthouse. She stopped him as they reached the door of the bedroom, a hand held out to his chest as she reached for the doorknob.

“Still takin’ care o’ the afterbirth,” she said calmly, “wait here and I’ll bring out the baby.” Tommy had to fist his hands by his side to stop himself from bursting through the door, every bit of his body screaming out to see if Evie was alright. But Polly stared him down until he nodded reluctantly, then disappearing in a flash of fanned hair and the quick click of the door.

She emerged a moment later with a tiny bundle held carefully in her arms. Polly was smiling down at the little thing so widely Tommy thought her face would split in two. She held the baby out, but Tommy was rooted in place. His hands weren’t made for small and delicate things, especially not those as fragile as the tiny swaddle of cloth in front of him. His hands were for breaking, for beating, for anger. Polly gave him a knowing, if not slightly exasperated look.

“You won’t hurt her.” But he still couldn’t reach out, fear gnawing at his innards. Polly sighed. “She needs to know you, Thomas.” So he willed his muscles to move and, with creaking arms that didn’t feel quite like his own, reached out to take his daughter, holding her out in front of him with one hand cupping her head and the other cradling her body.

It was astonishing, the small size of her, the skin of her small ears and fingers so thin it almost seemed like light would shine through if he held her to the window. Her head was dwarfed by his palm as it wrapped around its crown and covered with a full layer of dark hair, tufted like a fledgling’s downy feathers. Polly said something to him but he didn’t hear, couldn’t hear or see a thing except for her. And then all of a sudden she stirred. Her small eyelids twitched and strained and fluttered until they finally heaved open, and there were Evie’s eyes, deep and gold and knowing, looking up at him from their daughter’s face. 

“Hello, Poppy.” Tommy’s voice was a dry rasp in his throat, like autumn leaves scraping over cobblestone. His mouth kept moving like it wanted to speak, but Tommy found he had no words at all. He looked up to see Polly blinking back wetness, a trembling smile pulling at her lips.

Ada poked her head out the door to murmur that he could go in and see Evie, smiling at the two of them very much like Pol’ had, teary and wobbly. Tommy held Poppy for another moment before handing her off to Polly, who took her to the window by the end of the hall, murmuring quietly to her in Romani. Blessings and secrets and promises that she was drinking in with solemn eyes.

He went in to see Evie, now properly attended to and set up against the pillows of their bed. Esme and Ada tactfully slipped out as he edged into the room, Ada reaching out to squeeze his shoulder as she passed.

She was pale, so pale it seemed as if she’d slipped away in the moments when Polly wasn’t looking, and he had to reach for her hand to make sure she was still warm. She managed a shaky smile as he sank carefully down by her legs, and the relief it brought was so strong he suddenly forgot that he was being careful and cupped the sides of her face to bring her lips to his, mouth hard and desperate against her. By the way she squeezed his hands as he drew back Tommy thought she understood.

“_ Ita, bitti chiriko _.” 

“Did you see her?” Her voice was faint but there was a steady warmth coating her words, and the tenderness he’d seen all those months ago was shining through. He pressed a kiss to her knuckles, feeling the last bit of his fear melt away. 

“Yeah.” Tommy felt a grin spread over his face, lifting the exhaustion from him as it grew. “She’s grand, Evie.”

Polly came back in with the baby, Arthur and John and Michael and Finn trailing in uncertainly behind her. The baby was presented to Arthur first, and even though he’d a babe of his own he held her like Tommy had, terrified and eager all at once. Tommy could see his older brother’s craggy face rearrange itself into a wide and beaming smile, cheeks lifting so high they nearly screwed his eyes shut. He kept nodding his head gruffly, over and over.

“Need her to take a good look a’ her _ kokko’s _ face.” Arthur said thickly. “Looks just like you, Evie, big ol’ witchy eyes and everythin’.” 

Poppy was then passed off to John, who was more used to babies. He held her with a practiced ease, gentle in the way reserved for brutal men alone. 

“Ah, love babies.” He smiled as he poked gently at her round cheeks. “Might need another after holdin’ this little one.” Evie snorted.

“Esme’s exact words just a few hours ago, as I was screamin’, were ‘if John even thinks about doin’ this to me again I’ll cut his balls off in me sleep’.” John was unbothered, smiling lightly as Poppy wrapped her tiny fingers around his thumb. 

“Strong grip, she’ll be a fuckin’ terror when she’s older.” 

“Where’d Ada and Esme go off to?” Finn asked, craning his neck like Evie had them stashed under the bed.

“Asleep in the next room,” Polly said absently, not able to tear her eyes away from the baby for even a moment.

“Had a long night, us.” Evie said, and they all winced a bit as the memory of her screams came roaring back. 

Finn held her for a moment, unable to hide the nerves running through him, before frantically passing her on. A hand grenade instead of a baby.

Michael was next to greet the new Shelby, eyes wide as saucers in his face as he cradled her carefully

“What’s her name?” Karl and Billy and most of John’s litter of kids had been born before Michael had swept back into their lives, and his voice was layered with awe and love and a little bit of fear. Tommy could see his resolve as he held her, eyes grave in his face, making silent promises in his head to always keep her safe and happy.

“Poppy.” Tommy said. Michael smiled down at the little bundle tucked into the crook of his arm.

“Lovely to meet you, Poppy Shelby.”

She was admired and cuddled and doted upon for a bit longer, until eventually the exhaustion caught up with them. The remaining members of the clan trickled out one by one, until it was just the three of them.

Evie waved off the governess they’d had waiting on standby, heaving herself up out of bed. Tommy hovered as she walked gingerly to the next room to place the baby gently into her crib herself, trying to stifle a wince as she straightened up but not quite managing it. Exhausted from that herculean task, she leaned on Tommy a bit as they stood there, staring down at the baby like they couldn’t get enough. He’d never have enough of her as long as he lived.

“We made that.” He murmured. Evie laughed softly, and Tommy could feel it shaking where she was pressed against him.

“Well, I did most o’ the work but I do appreciate your contribution.” 

“Should we go to bed? You must be exhausted, love.” Evie hesitated.

“Can we look at her a bit longer?” Her voice was hushed, and Tommy slipped an arm around her shoulders.

“Yeah.”

And when Evie finally admitted exhaustion and they shuffled off to sleep, Tommy glanced out the windows. The fields were clear, and so was his head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don’t really have a good reason for choosing Poppy as the name other than that I really like it lol.  
Again, please leave a comment letting me know what you think! Your comments truly make my day.
> 
> TRANSLATION NOTES:  
Amadoubellen - mother of god  
Ita, bitti chiriko - hello, little bird  
Kokko - uncle


	17. Rifts and Reconciliation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *I know Tommy and the dope doesn’t come into play until season 5, but creative license okay  
* end of the fic references a previous chapter, ‘Beginnings’ so read that first if you haven’t yet!  
the *signal a POV switch

It wasn’t even really any one thing that set it off, nothing he could look back on and point to. The voices that had always lived at the back of his head just started to grow louder one day, clamoring for his attention as they whispered and sniggered and shouted over one another. They sounded off at the back of his mind even as others spoke, and Tommy had to focus to card through the mess of words, untangle the real from the ghosts.

The dealings with the Russians were wearing him thin and the priest from the Economic League was closing in. His pale face hovered just behind Tommy’s eyes, reptilian and thin-lipped above the immaculate length of his black robe. The stress just egged the voices on, louder and louder until he started to scream and roar to drown them out. He felt like a live wire, too quick to react and spitting at everyone who dared to drift too close.

Evie hadn’t been swayed at first, she was as firm and unafraid as she’d always been. But his nerves grew more and more frayed, the small bottles of snow and dope only serving to flay him further, leaving him raw and tender as each fine layer of himself was peeled slowly back. Evie had the stubbornness of an ox, so for a while no matter how much he snapped at her, or how loudly he roared, she wouldn’t budge. The wedding was still fresh in her mind, the vows of for better or for worse still ringing in her ears like a bell.

His anger lived in the house alongside them, but she shouldered it like she did everything else, Atlas holding up the heft of the earth. The bottles would cloud his vision but even through that and all of the rage he could see her eyes screwed shut against the onslaught, lovely mouth pressed tightly together. After a while it seemed to him like he was screaming just because he could, because he knew she could take it. So confident in her love and loyalty was Tommy that in the moments when the drugs blurred the lines of the world and brightened its colors he tried to push the boundaries between them.

*****

It wasn’t like the other times, the times when after he’d worked his way through his bellowing and his rage he’d hit a point where he came back to himself. And then, when he’d shrunk back down behind his skin he would come to her, shame seeping from every bit of him. Tommy would apologize as best as he could manage and Evie would forgive him, because he meant it even if he couldn’t manage the words. The rage would recede like the tide as the air in the house returned and everyone breathed a sigh of relief. 

It was different than those times. The rage never drained away and the whole house would be submerged in his moods, leaving Evie and the others wading through it waist-deep, struggling against the strength of its current. If she tried to calm him it would set him off, if she left him alone it would set him off. At first her concern overpowered her own fury, because this wasn’t Tommy screaming at her but the demons living under his skin, brought to life by his little bottles that blew his pupils to black holes in his skull. Maybe that was where his rage was coming from, the depths of that empty blackness, pouring out through her husband’s face where the blue eyes she loved should be.

But her concern ran out. Because he wouldn’t just fucking tell her what had him worked up into a lather, wouldn’t tell her what danger was looming or what ghosts had come knocking. And one day it had been too much. She didn’t know if it was the words he was shouting or if it was the look in his eyes as he raged - twisted and hateful, no love visible in their black depths. His bottles had drained it from him.

If something started off slowly a person could get used to it, bit by bit until it became the new routine. Until one day they woke up in a life so completely unlike the one they’d had that it snaps them. The hurts piled up like bricks, one by one by one between them, until they stood there one afternoon in the bedroom she’d always treasured as a safe haven and the wall came crumbling down. Evie could almost hear the resounding crack of her nerves snapping, breaking after shouldering both of their hurts on her own.

So she cursed and screamed right back at him and their fight swept through the house like a tidal wave, sending the servants scurrying for cover. And when the rage had passed and the screaming had died down, they were left standing there, everything laid out between them. She stood, swaying a bit like she’d just been hit over the head, when a heavy sigh rippled through her and brought the tears with it like a storm bringing the rain. It was a sadness pulled from deep within her, one that felt slow and cold as ice. She’d spent her energy on the screaming and shouting, so the tears were silent, dripping slowly down her face as she stared at a spot behind his head. And then Evie turned to walk slowly to the wardrobe, limbs moving of their own accord, stiff and mechanical as she tried to put even a shred of distance between them. 

*****

Tommy could pick out the moment when it all became too much, when something behind her face snapped cleanly in two. Her eyes shuttered like a curtain had been pulled between them, and with tears leaving glistening trails over her cheeks she slowly turned her back on him.

When he worked up the nerve to follow her he found her quietly packing a bag, sniffling a bit as she moved about the room. 

“I’ll be at Ada’s.” And he nodded, because there was nothing to do or say. The push and pull of the last few months had been his fault alone. To ask her to stay would be too cruel, even for a man like him. He trailed behind her as she slipped out the front door, eyes glued to the ground.

There was a moment right before she ducked into the car where she must’ve felt him watching her. She turned back, hair blowing wild as the wind buffeted her. Her eyes met his and it was like a bullet tearing into him, burrowing through his skin and muscle and veins and bones. It was an ocean of sadness, deep and full and he could feel it from where he stood. And swimming in amongst that sadness was the bewilderment, because she couldn’t understand a thing she’d done to deserve his rage. That alone, that confusion, made him ache to run to her, wrap her in his arms and keep her from driving away. But he stood, rooted in place as she shoved her bag through the car door. Evie paused for a moment, looking like she had one last thing to say. But then a cloud of defeat swept over her face and she screwed her eyes shut, steeling herself against him. She ducked into the car and hid her gaze in her lap. The car engine started, and for a moment it was the loudest noise in the world. Tommy just stared and stared as she drove away. She didn’t look back.

Days slid into weeks and Tommy missed her like a piece of him had been scooped out from his chest. He let the shame sweep over him, because really it was no better than a man stumbling home to beat his children because he happened to be in a mood. He delved deeper into the bottles of dope and the bottles of whiskey - one numbed the demons and the other burned them from the inside out. But the bottles couldn’t fill the hold she’d left, the one that gaped like an open wound. 

And in the end it was Ada sent to scold him, not John or Arthur or Finn, or even Polly. Ada, because they all knew he loved her the best. Ada, who could always find the chink in his armor. Tommy was always soft on Ada, so it was her who came knocking three weeks after Evie left.

He let her in and they drifted into his study, pouring drinks and curling toward the fire as its crackling fought off the evening chill, all the while Tommy cursed women and how they held each other in times of sadness. But beneath that was gratitude, hidden in the deepest parts of him, for the way the family held Evie. They held her when he couldn’t.

They sat in silence for a bit, sipping from their glasses. Ada watched Tommy and Tommy watched the fire. She broke the silence first.

“You’re a colossal fuckin’ idiot.” Her voice was matter-of-fact, because she knew it and he knew it and she knew that he knew it.

“Is she leavin’ for good, then?” Ada bit her lip as she thought it over.

“Depends on you.” She said slowly.

“Perhaps it’s for the best. All I do is hurt her.” His words were hollow as driftwood lying forgotten on the beach, echoes of the waves sounding off it. Ada’s eyes were wide and gaping in disbelief.

“For the best… fuckin’ _ what _, Tom...listen to yourself.” She spluttered. 

“I’ve been barkin’ at her for weeks. She tries to make me feel better, and I just bark at her more. We were foolin’ ourselves to think I could make a good husband.” He turned the glass round and round in his hand, not able to bring himself to meet her gaze. 

“You just...” she sighed, “you have to let people take care o’ you sometimes.”

“Don’t need takin’ care of, me.” He grunted. Ada watched him for a moment, and not even the flames in the grate could warm the sadness swimming in her eyes.

“Everyone needs takin’ care of, Tom, especially you.”

Ada went through the house, opening drawers and cupboards and fishing underneath cushions, plucking his little bottles from their hidden nests one by one. She went room by room, collecting them in an old carpet bag stuffed at the back of their wardrobe. And when she thought she found them all she turned to him.

“Now show me what I’ve missed.” 

“You haven’t missed anythin’.” She glared, unimpressed.

“I'm not messin'. Evie won’t even consider comin’ back if you don’t get rid o’ them all.” So he grumbled and sighed and produced the rest. He could hear them rattling around on the bottom of the back, clinking together, calling to him even then.

When she was satisfied that the house was clean and bottle-free, she went to leave. Tommy walked her to the door, feeling a heavy sort of tired that felt almost like he’d been swimming in very cold water. She opened the door and turned back to him.

“Ada…” His voice trailed off but she seemed to know what he wanted to say. She placed a gentle hand over his cheek, rubbing a gloved thumb across the rough stubble he hadn’t bothered to shave.

“Do you think we care for you so little we wouldn’t be here to help?” And then, because Tommy was always soft on Ada, he let her wrap her skinny arms around him. He brought a hand up to cup the back of her neck gently, the way he did when she was just barely old enough to walk on her own and their father’s drunken rages reduced her to tears. She pulled back with a rouged smile, setting off down the drive with the bag full of bottles clinking at her side, and Tommy dared to let a small sliver of what almost felt like hope spark to life in his chest.

Two days later she was back, standing in the entryway with her bag at her feet, ignoring the muffled whispers of the maids as they skittered up the stairs and disappeared behind doors like they were battening down for a squall. For once in all of the years shared between them, Tommy couldn’t read her. Her face was closed off, carefully smoothed like a blank canvas. Cold. 

“I don’t presume to understand your demons, Thomas.” Evie started, her voice crisp and distant even as she stood right in front of him. “But I am not your punchin’ bag.”

“Evie -” She cut him off.

“M’not done speakin’.” Her glare leveled him. “No matter what you’re dealin’ with, you’ve no right to take it out on me, you hear?”

He nodded slowly. “You’re right.” He had to shove his hands into his trouser pockets to stop him reaching out to her. He ached to hold her, to crush her so tightly against him that there was no more room between them for hurt to take root. “I understand if you want to leave.” He tried to keep his voice even, didn’t want her hearing his heart screaming _ stay, stay, stay _ under his words. It knocked her, those words did.

“Fuckin’ what?” Evie shook her head, bemused. “Jesus...smartest person I know but you’re still absolutely thick. Leave you...Christ. No. I’ve decided that I’m not leavin’ you.” She sighed a bit, like it was bad news. "I’m not leavin’ because I love you too much, you fuckin’ bastard.” Relief flooded through him with such force that it set his knees trembling. 

“But,” she continued, “this won’t do. The dope and the snow has to stop.” She glared at his pockets like he had them stashed away there.

“Not the whiskey?” His voice was hoarse but she heard the jest all the same. The corners of her mouth twitched upwards like they wanted to smile but she wouldn’t allow it.

“Ah, well. I don’t think I could ever stop you drinkin’ whiskey.” Something in her face shifted, like a cloud breaking to let the sun through, and Tommy couldn’t hold himself back any longer. He crossed the divide between them in two long strides, slamming into her hard enough to knock the breath from them both in a singular _ whoosh. _He scooped her up and felt her fingers digging into his shoulders as her legs locked themselves tightly around his hips. Tommy couldn't have have pushed her off even if he wanted to with how desperately she clung to him. He could feel the hot dampness of her tears where her face was pressed into his neck, and after a bit he couldn’t tell which tears were hers and which were his. It was frantic, this need to be close to one another. Her body was shuddering as she cried and Tommy sank slowly, breath coming in sharp pants, still holding her tight as he could, until they were a jumble of limbs and tears on the wooden floor. 

He didn’t know how long they stayed there, only heard the soft whispers of the maids as they poked their head round the corners, only to disappear again faster than he could blink. The stutter of their hearts calmed bit by bit until they beat together in unison. Evie pulled back to look at him after they’d cried all their tears. Her eyes were puffy and her hair was stuck to her cheeks where her crying had wet them, and nothing Tommy had ever seen looked half as beautiful as she did in that moment. 

He snaked a hand around the back of her neck, trailing his thumb along the tilt of her jaw as they looked at each other.

“D’you remember the day you gave me that knife with the pearl handle?” Her voice was thick and husky, barely above a whisper. Tommy nodded.

“Yeah.”

“And d’you remember the day when we were loadin’ those barrels for Charlie and I went all frozen?”

“Yeah, pale as a ghost.”

“I saw one o’ the men who used to visit my mother.” Tommy stilled, and as he listened her eyes went a little out of focus. She was seeing another place, another time. “I saw him, healthy as a horse, walkin’ through the city while my mother was dead in the fuckin’ ground. So I went to Pol’, and for the first time I cried and cried and cried.” She shifted a bit so that they were both leaning back against the door, and slid her head down to rest her cheek against his shoulder. He lowered it obligingly and threaded a hand through hers, staring down their intertwined knuckles as she continued.

“I hadn’t cried, you know, before that. Not when she died, not when I lived on the streets, not at all. And it built up and up until it was chokin’ me.” She squeezed his hand hard. “Pol’ told me after I cried all my tears that you have to let things out, otherwise they rule you.” Evie twisted to look up at them then, eyes grave and intent on his. “You have to tell me things, Thomas.”

He must have hesitated, because she continued quickly, one word rushing into the next. “I don’t mean things that you think might put me in danger if I know about them, none o’ that. But the things that eat at you, the ghosts and the threats. You have to tell me.” Tommy nodded slowly.

“Orright.” He could feel her relax against him.

“Good. You were smart to give Ada all o’ the bottles. Arthur and Polly were next up to visit.”

“Desperate times, eh?” 

Evie chuckled. “Had to call in the cavalry.” Tommy twisted his head down to smile at her. It felt odd, smiling after all of those weeks where his mouth felt like it could never be anything but a frown again.

“Haven’t I ever told you the cavalry’s fuckin’ useless?” And it was horrible and not even a bit funny, but they laughed and laughed and laughed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Leave a comment and let me know what you think :)


	18. Author's Note

Hi guys, just wanted to give you a quick update. The next chapter I post -sometime in the next few days - will be the last for this series. I’ve come to the end of what I think I can do with these particular characters, and I want to finish it off before it becomes too drawn out and cliche. Thank you all for reading, for commenting, and for loving Tommy and Evie as I do. (Special shoutout to AniRay, your comments always put a huge smile on my face). This project started at a time in my life when I desperately needed a creative outlet and to do something I enjoy. And I’ve truly enjoyed writing this story. Thank you <3


	19. Good Bits

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my last chapter. I wanted it to be a nice mix of sweetness and angst to end the series on a satisfying note. Thank you all for reading and encouraging me, I appreciate it more than you could ever know.  
I'd love to hear your comments one last time :)

The sound of Tommy barking at Frances was all Evie needed to know he was home. It echoed through the house, bounced off of the walls, blanketed the floors like carpet. She grumbled to herself as she followed its trail to the study. His voice died off as she reached for the doorknob, and when she slipped in she found Frances hovering anxiously by the door and Tommy standing there with his back to them both, staring into the fire. Even as he stood in front of her Evie could sense the distance between him and the room. He probably didn’t even realize that Frances was still there. Evie squeezed France’s arm and gave her an apologetic smile, jerking her head towards the door. With a glance dripping in gratitude the older woman hurried out, head ducked and shoulders hunched. Tommy glanced up as the door closed, face blank, barely a hint of recognition as their eyes met. 

“Ben Younger is dead.” Tommy’s voice was flat, cold enough to freeze the breath in her chest. Ada. She had to call Ada. Tommy glanced over at her like he could hear her thinking.

“Just came from speakin’ with Ada. She’ll come and see you in the morning. She…” he took in a sharp breath, short and stuttering like it cut him “she said he never even knew about the babe.” God. Ada alone again raising another child without a father. A heavy sort of feeling came over her, the infinite kind of sadness that could overtake a person like a wave at a moment’s notice, leaving them in above their head and struggling for breath. Evie was frozen in place, held in place by all of that sadness. “A boy died in the explosion,” he continued, sharp bitterness spilling from his tongue and coating each word. “Because o’ me.” 

The flames cast shadows that danced over his cheekbones, throwing his hunched frame into sharp relief. She could see the misery pouring off of him like raindrops sliding down a windowpane. She wanted to go to him but her feet were still rooted in place.

“I ruin everythin’ I touch.” His voice was barely above a whisper. “Everythin’ I fuckin touch, Evelyn.” He let out a sort of laugh but it had a choked quality to it, like he couldn’t quite fit his mouth around it. He pitched and dipped as he stood and suddenly Evie’s legs started to move of their own accord, reaching him just as he started to crumble to the floor. Her arms snaked like vines around him and they sank down together, limbs tangled and skulls knocking each other. Even as his elbows jabbed her and the sharp edge of his hip jammed into her leg she refused to let go.

“No, my love. Not everythin’.” She murmured, breath ragged, leaning against the desk with Tommy’s head bumping against her shoulder as he lay back against her chest. She wrapped an arm around him and held him tightly to her as if sheer strength alone could hold the cracking pieces together. 

“I try, Evie. I try to be good.” He twisted to look up at her, eyebrows knitted together like he was trying to convince her. The dim light erased the sprinkle of greys in his hair and the lines bracketing his mouth, just leaving a confused child begging to know why he was hurting. Evie had to take a firm hold of her heart to stop it crumbling to bits inside her as he passed the back of his hand quickly over his eyes. He sighed, a slow and weary breath dredged up from the murky depths of him. “Gettin’ too old for this.” Evie snorted despite the fact that none of it was particularly amusing.

“Old man, are you?” A mirthless smile poked at his mouth.

“Not as quick as I used to be. My joints ache sometimes. Startin’ to go a bit grey.” He shrugged tiredly. “Old man, me.” She reached a hand out to brush at some of those silvery hairs, close cropped where they sprouted around his temples.

“Just makes me think about all o’ the times your life was almost cut down. It’s a gift, Thomas. Every strand of silver, every new line, every creak in your achin’ bones. I treasure it all.” Tommy stared at her desperately as she stroked his hair, pleading silently with her to mend his hurts with her hands as she’d done all their lives. She could see the ghosts swimming in the blue of his eyes, John and Danny and men he’d known in France. And now Ben Younger. He carried them with him everywhere.

“Didn’t think you’d survive the war.” She murmured. “Every moment with you is one I thought I’d never have again.”

“Would’ve been better if I didn’t.” Tommy said tonelessly, and Evie dug her fingers into his scalp. He stiffened under her grip, muscles cording as he hissed at the sting of her nails.

“Don’t ever fuckin’ say that to me again.” Her throat felt tight. “I slept in your bed the night after you left, because it smelled like you and it felt like you. And I lay there feelin’ all o’ that love I didn’t understand yet. Was like half o’ me was missin’.” 

“Don't deserve all o' that." She didn't like the helplessness layered in his voice, didn't like the way it seemed to weigh him down. "M’not a good man, _ ves’tacha _.” Evie shrugged a bit, feeling the heft of his weight shift as she lifted her shoulders. It didn’t bother her, she was used to carrying more than just herself.

“Perhaps not always. But I think you try. And isn’t that really the point?” For a moment she thought she had him, but the hint of what looked like hope in his face was snuffed out, gloom settling over its sharp planes.

“Doesn’t matter.” He muttered. Evie sighed, fighting to tamp down the rising frustration.

“_ Chavaia. _ If you don’t want to live for yourself right now that’s fine. But live for me until you do. Live for the children until you do.”

The look of defeat didn’t leave his face. Not as she helped him to stand, not as she led up up the staircase, not as she curled herself around him in their bed. It was too early to sleep but she held him in the tangle of blankets, willing him whole again. 

As big and beautiful and fine as their house was, it was also more drafty than it had any right to be. They’d thought that after leaving Watery Lane they’d never be cold again, but their first winter proved them wrong. Even pressed up against the searing heat of Tommy’s skin Evie fought a shiver. Tommy trailed a finger down the raised gooseflesh of her arm, which only served to make her shiver more.

“Cold?”

“A bit. Fancy a bath?” Before he could answer they stilled at the muffled cry coming from down the corridor. Evie groaned. 

“Leave it to Frances.” He murmured.

“I believe Frances has been terrorized enough for one night.” Evie said lightly. “I’ll draw the bath if you settle them back down.” Tommy sighed, but obligingly swung his legs out of bed.

“Orright.” 

*****

Tommy managed to will his weary feet to trudge to the next room where he found John thrashing in his bed, his sharp movements becoming more and more frenzied as the blanket tangled more tightly around him.

Tommy hastened over to bend down and take a gentle hold of his son by the shoulders. John woke with a gasp, blinking up into the darkness like a startled deer. He went limp with relief as he realized it was his father standing over him, not the clawed and snarling monster chasing him through his dreams. He threw himself into Tommy’s arms like it was the safest place he knew, his breath coming in sharp little pants. His face was flushed and damp with sweat, and Tommy could feel the frantic stutter of his heart in his chest as he wound an arm around him.

“What’s wrong, Johnny boy, eh?” 

“Nightmare.” John mumbled, tightening his little fists in Tommy’s shirt like he was afraid of being pushed off. 

“Ah, and d’you know the secret about nightmares?” John peered up at him, blue meeting blue, earnest and hopeful and trusting. “They lose all o’ their power when you realize what they are. When you realize your mind is just playin’ tricks, you can laugh in the monster’s face.” Tommy felt John’s breathing slow as he spoke. He tried to keep his voice low and soft but it was no use, Poppy’s little body stirred in the next bed.

Tommy stifled a sigh as she hefted herself up onto her elbows, blinking and squinting into the dark. She narrowed her eyes at the two of them.

“Are you havin’ a story without me?” And the indignant accusation in her voice was so like Evie that for a moment Tommy felt a flash of shame, like a naughty child caught nicking sweets from the highest shelf in the kitchen. She was her mother in miniature, the same golden eyes and the same dark curls and the same fire burning in her chest. Blood was a funny thing.

And then John’s head swiveled back to look up at him with shining eyes. “Please, a story!” So he sighed and beckoned to Poppy. She hopped up to scurry like a mouse across the floor and scramble into her brother’s bed. The two of them rearranged themselves so that they were tucked under each of his arms, rustling and shifting to get comfortable. Tommy always marveled how the children relaxed against him - few people in the world were so at ease in his presence. It sparked a complicated twist of emotions in his belly - pride and shame and fear and love, all tugging at him demanding to be felt. 

“What’ll it be tonight, then?”

“The one about the ghost!” Poppy crowed. Tommy raised an eyebrow.

“I’ve told that one at least three times this week, Pop’. You’re not sick of it yet?” 

“‘Course not.” She said easily, arms crossed like she was offended, another gesture so like her mother that Tommy had to fight off a grin.

“Orright then.” He gave them a deferential nod. “Many years ago, on a street called Watery Lane, there lived a boy and his family. He had brothers and a sister and an aunt that looked after them all.” He shifted a bit so that their weight was spread more evenly against him. “They kept hearin’ funny noises, scratches at the door and little footsteps. The boy’s brother thought it was a ghost.”

“Uncle John.” Poppy cried excitedly. Tommy closed his eyes for a moment against the dull twinge in his chest that always came with the thought of his brother, before staring sternly down his nose.

“Can’t very well get through the story with you interruptin now can I, love?” She flushed and quieted down obediently. 

“The boy went weeks without seein’ the ghost himself. He tried to be quick but he couldn’t quite catch it. Until one day, when he heard the noises again. He crept to the door, quiet as a mouse, so quiet the ghost didn’t hear him comin’. He flung open the door, and that’s when he learned that it wasn’t a ghost. It was a girl. And that girl’s name was Evie.”

He returned to Evie, feeling like whatever had been knocked loose inside of him had resettled. She was already lounging in the copper tub, hair piled on top of her head with cheeks flushed from the heat, and Tommy thought to himself that if heaven existed, it’d look like that. He shed his clothes quickly and lowered himself in carefully behind her, sliding her hips backward so that she lay flush against him. 

“All well?” She asked softly. He hummed in response and let his head tilt back, letting the heat lap away at the stress he’d been holding in his body, the tension that throbbed like a deep bruise in the very core of him. 

“What story was it tonight?”

“The ghost girl.” 

Evie huffed in disbelief. “How many fuckin’ times can they hear it before gettin’ sick of it?” Tommy just shrugged.

“It’s their favorite, or so I’m told.” He found her hand under the water and squeezed it. “My favorite as well.”

And so they soaked, steam curling up from the surface of the water, one of Tommy’s arms resting on the rim of the tub with the other wrapped around Evie. He let his hand trail over her hip, up her waist, circling round and round over the ridges of her ribs, before coming up to cup the swell of her breast. Not in demand, not in question, just because it seemed to fit there.

Had it been another night he might have dipped his fingers lower and kissed along the line of her bare shoulder, covering each droplet of water with his lips just to hear the little whimpers he loved. 

But his body was tired and his soul ached deep within him, so they reclined there together, soaking in the heat and the intimacy that came with so many shared years. What she’d said before came rushing back then, about the time before the war and the love she hadn’t understood.

“I think about it sometimes.” He whispered, half to himself. 

“What’s that, my love?”

“How I spent my time before the war. Wasted a lot o’ the time we could’ve had just wantin’ you.”

“Thomas Shelby, pinin’ away like a schoolgirl?” She teased, bringing a hand up to cover his where it was holding her.. Tommy nuzzled her ear gently, relishing the soft sigh that shuddered through her.

“Never wanted anyone else in this world but you.” He could tell by the way her cheeks lifted that she was smiling. 

They stayed there until the water grew cold before slipping up out of the tub, slick as seals, to take shelter in the swath of blankets on their bed. As soon as they laid down Evie shifted closer to fit herself around him. It was like a reflex, the instant need to be near one another. If she woke in the middle of the night on the far side of the bed she would wiggle her way back to him. Tommy could tell how tired she was by the way her eyelids fluttered like leaves in the wind, dark fringe of lashes reaching down to brush at her cheeks.

“It’s not all bad, is it? Some parts o’ this life are still good.” There was a slight tremor in her voice. She often hid her worry from him, but sometimes he could hear it peeking through. He fought back the bite of guilt. 

“_ Arva, bitti chiriko _. Some parts are still good.” She drummed her fingers softly against his chest.

“Sleep, dearest. Things always look better in the morning.” He wanted to disagree, but she was already fading into unconsciousness. 

Tommy woke to the sun shining its rays directly across his eyes, and he cursed silently to himself as he squinted and blinked. Evie loved the tall windows of the room, loved the way they let in the pale and hazy light in the morning and the fiery glow of the evening’s dying sun. Tommy could’ve done without the early sun poking in and waking him, but she liked the light, so he never bothered to draw the curtains.

Evie had shifted during the night to the other half of the bed, curled on her side with one arm stretched toward him. He watched the flutter of her eyelids as she slept, rosebud lips slightly parted, the soft rise and fall of her breath meshing with his own heartbeat. The wild tumble of her hair shone like white gold where the sun hit it, fanning out over the pillow like a silken curtain. He nudged her hand slightly and smiled as she shifted, still asleep, back toward him. She burrowed her face into the side of his neck, a hand slipping up to rest against his chest. Tommy banished Oswald Mosley and Jimmy Mccavern and Ben Younger and all the rest of them from his mind and just watched her for a moment, because she was right. There were good bits too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please let me know your thoughts:) I'll miss all of your lovely comments


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